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BY-WAYS 



NATURE AND LIFE 



BY 



CLARENCE DEMING 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

NEW YORK : 27 * 29 WEST 23D STREET 

LONDON: 25 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN 

1884 



Press of 

G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New York 






5\J^ 



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The chapters of this volume, having already appeared 
over the initials of the author in the columns of the 
New York Evening Post, need no formal introduction to 
the readers of that journal. To other readers, who see 
these sketches now for the first time, it may be explained 
briefly that they have been penned in out-of-the-way 
places of nature and life, during trips on two continents, 
extending over three years of time and some eighty 
thousand miles of distance. Often composed during the 
hurry of travel or of transitory sojourn, they must crave 
the reader's kindest indulgence for not a few errors of 
form and, it may be, some errors of fact. If, for the 
faults of the volume, any variety or freshness of its 
themes shall compensate, the writer's largest hopes will 
be abundantly fulfilled. 



CONTENTS 



rAGE 

The Bowery of London i 

Curiosities of ZoOlogy n 

A British Election-day 24 

England's Gun Foundry 34 

London in a Fog 43 

Waterloo To-day 52 

The Giant Tides of Fundy 61 

Newfoundland and the Cod-fishers 75 

Seal-hunting on the Ice-fields 93 

Heart's Content and the! Ocean Cables 102 

Deep Fishing IN Tropic Seas 114 

Shadows in Cuba 124 

The Bahama Sponge-fishers 143 

Down in a Coal-mine 152 

The Buried Forests of New Jersey 162 

Petrolia and its Marvels 172 

A Yankee Town-meeting 182 

On Black Ice 193 

The Old College Ball-ground 203 

An Historic Meeting-house 212 

Oddities of Fishcraft 227 

Among the Maniacs 237 

Silver Spring 249 

Catching the Grayling 258 

A Yankee Coon-hunt 276 

Logging in Michigan Wilds 285 



IV CONTENTS. 

The Father of Waters 303 

The Shoestring District ; A Political Retrospect . . .321 

The Southern Planter 332 

The Negro of the Mississippi Bends 343 

Negro Rites and Worship 355 

Negro Songs and Hymns 37° 



By-ways of Nature and Life. 



THE BOWERY OF LONDON. 

A WIDE street, like an artery of the human body, 
cuts the map of London in that part which rep- 
resents the northeastern region of the great city. Like 
so many of the London thoroughfares, it changes its 
name several times without shifting its general direction, 
becoming in succession Whitechapel Road, Mile End 
Road, and The Bow. In times long gone by it was the 
old Essex Turnpike, and at its suburban extremity pleasant 
dwellings and neat door-yards still resist the crush of city 
growth and the ambition of trade. But at the White- 
chapel end the street may almost be called the aorta of 
London. Through it by day the city life pulsates and 
reflows. By night the human tide is drawn from the 
slums of East London into the great street as naturally as 
the low life of the east side of New York drains into the 
Bowery. Whitechapel Road is reached from Regent 
Street or the Strand by a number of omnibus lines which 
pass the Bank of England, go by the great financial houses 
of Cornhill and Lcadenhall Street, and pass also Hounds- 



2 BY-WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

ditch, where the Jews' Old Clothes Exchange, with its 
admission fee of a penny, well repays a visit. The stretch 
from the high life of the West End to the low life of White- 
chapel is not more than three miles ; yet the American 
tourist rarely makes the trip, and to most of our London 
visitors the very name of the curious street will be un- 
familiar. I doubt whether a single London guide-book 
ever mentions the huge thoroughfare as one of the city 
sights. For all that it is not less a curiosity, a spectacle, 
and a wonder never forgotten when once seen, and never 
studied without expanding into fresh realms of lowly 
human life, teeming with things curious, strange, and sad. 
For visiting Whitechapel Road one can choose any 
pleasant evening, but Saturday night is best, when the 
humble denizen of London not only exults in the impend- 
ing hoUday, but must hie him out-of-doors to get provision 
for Sunday, when the shops will be closed. Take an 
omnibus, mount to one of its twin top seats far above the 
madding crowd of the Strand or Oxford Street, and let it 
bear you through the whirl, and rush, and gleaming lights 
of West London to your destination. In twenty minutes 
one reaches the Bank and the financial centre of England, 
by daylight congested with business, but now at night 
dull as a village green. A little way beyond the crowds 
begin to increase. It is an altered crowd too in dress and 
bearing from that left behind in the west city. Shops 
begin to appear anew and low drinking-places to multiply. 
These latter bear a different set of titles from the liquor 



THE BOWERY OF LONDON. 3 

shops of fashionable London. "The Mitre," "The 
Crown," " The Swan and Eagle " of the West End are 
succeeded by " The Blind Beggar," " The Jug and De- 
canter," "The Plug," and " Eel Pie House," of the humbler 
Whitechapel region. Then we enter the great street 
itself, at first narrow, but in a few blocks widening to its 
full proportions. And what a street ! It is two hundred 
and fifty or three hundred feet wide, say three or four 
times the width of the Bowery of New York. On each 
side are foot-pavements which dwarf those of the Paris 
Boulevards, twenty-five to sixty feet wide, each of them 
broader than most of the London thoroughfares. The 
sidewalk on the right going out Whitechapel is compara- 
tively deserted, and most of its crowd is turned toward 
the broader pavement on the left. Along the exterior 
side of this foot-pavement, which is more like a street than 
a sidewalk, hucksters are allowed space without paying 
license. The effect is to convert one side of the broad 
Whitechapel Road into a new street or market-place 
three quarters of a mile long, with the solid structures on 
one side, the hucksters' booths on the other. Between 
flows a vast current of human beings, nine tenths from the 
baser classes, and so big and incongruous that it seems as 
though low London had but one outlet, and that White- 
chapel. To see this crowd alone is worth the trip to 
Whitechapel and back. The very size and the resistless 
sweep of the torrent of humanity give an impression of 
power and dignity which is only lost when one mixes with 
the mass and sees its vile elements. 



4 BY-WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

Words are tame to describe the fantastic brilliancy of the 
scene. It is Vanity Fair by gas-light, only a Vanity Fair 
far more varied, grotesque, and big than that in Bunyan's 
allegory. On the one side are the shops, using the 
name to designate the places where every thing, includ- 
ing character, is sold. Bakeries, stores, markets, mix side 
by side with low concert-rooms, billiard-halls, and grog- 
shops. At intervals dark alleys lead behind to deeper 
haunts of vice or misery. Here and there is a small 
chapel or a little hall opened for nightly prayer-meetings 
by some of the Christian associations of London ; for the 
city missions justly recognize that in the Whitechapel 
quarter is at once the fairest and foulest field for Chris- 
tian endeavor. In front of one of the humble places 
of worship often stands a street preacher addressing a 
group of hearers who are more curious than reverent. 
Sometimes he is a man singularly gifted with rude elo- 
quence and the power of whose rough phrase and crude 
pathos puts to shame the rhetoric of more finished orators. 
Over all this medley of trade, vice, and religion shine the 
brilliant gas-jets from the shops, meeting half-way the 
lurid glare from the petroleum torches of the hucksters 
across the walk, and through the gauntlet of light pours 
the endless crowd. 

The booths of the hucksters and cheap Jacks reach 
along the outer edge of the sidewalk for a distance of 
half or three quarters of a mile. A few shillings will 
set any one up for business in this Acheron of trade. 



THE BOWERY OF LONDON. 5 

It is hard to say whether wonder or pity predominates 
at sight of the infinite forms of catching a penny by 
trafific or trickery. Every thing sold is of tenth-rate 
quality, and it goes without saying that every thing 
imaginable is sold. The old junk booths seem to represent 
the prevailing type of traffic. One can buy in them 
every conceivable article of small hardware, from a 
shingle-nail up to a coffee-mill, but every thing is rusty, 
weather-beaten, or broken. Next to the junk shop, it 
may be, comes a vendor of cast-off tooth-brushes, " One 
for a penny, three for tuppence." A roaring quack is 
next in line, crying up his panacea for tapeworms and 
exhibiting a ghastly bottled array of the creatures. His 
companion sells old pieces of sole leather or boots and 
shoes which look as if their own weight would break 
them down. Move on a few feet. Here is a shooting 
gallery on an original plan. There is space only for a 
range about five feet long, so that every thing except 
the gun, is reduced to correspond. You hold the 
muzzle of the firearm within a foot of the target, but 
you are expected to hit a bull's-eye of the size of a pea 
with a ball like a small bird shot. A little farther on 
comes the "cocoa-nut game" in full blast. The pro- 
prietor has put up a wire alley twenty feet long and 
ten feet wide. At one end are equi-distant and upright 
rows of cocoa-nuts, say two feet apart, made by mount- 
ing the nuts on sticks of different heights. You pay a 
penny apiece for wooden balls and get two pennies for 



6 BV-fVA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

each cocoa-nut knocked down. To the eye it seems as 
though the veriest tyro could hit a nut at every shot. 
Try it ! You will find that throwing with horizontal 
arm the three nuts in each upright row are almost as 
hard to hit as though the three nuts were one, and 
that the shrewd proprietor has not arranged them thus 
to lose money. Your pennies melt away like copper in 
a crucible, and you leave with more experience and less 
small change. Here, too, are the electric batteries, the 
tests of hitting, smiting, throwing, and other devices 
familiar to summer visitors on Coney Island. There are 
for sale old clothes, torn umbrellas, rotten dry-goods, 
decayed fruit, books, as immoral within as they are dirty 
without, archaic fish and oysters, to whose lasting quality 
in a sense the writer can testify from actual experience. 
You eat one at night and you taste it until next morn- 
ing. But why proceed ? As well try to list the articles 
in the Chatham Street shops or catalogue the truck thrown 
annually into the East River. 

And then the theatres of this lowly region ! They are 
many in number, but of one invariable kind — the variety 
show ; and they give variety with a vengeance. By the 
side of them the extinct Old Bowery ranked as a temple 
of High Art, and its vilest tragedies were fairly Shakes- 
pearian. I recall a visit to one of these playhouses of 
the Whitechapel precinct. By a long and devious passage, 
and borne in by a surging throng of street Arabs, we 
reached the interior of the theatre, behind the row of 



THE BOWERY OF LONDON. J 

houses facing the street. For one and sixpence (thirty- 
six cents American money) we secured the chief box, 
giving a proscenic view of the stage, and a still better 
point whence to observe the unique show in front. A 
curious scene it was. The begrimed theatre was filled 
with about two thousand people. The single gallery 
slanted from the shadowy rafters down almost to the 
stage, looking like a quarter-section of a big Roman 
amphitheatre. An actor at the footlights could 
almost have shaken hands with the small boys in 
the front gallery row. Below the gallery the seats 
reached back from the dingy orchestra until lost in the 
fog of all-pervading tobacco smoke. The audience — one 
part female, two parts, men, and ninety-seven parts street- 
boys — was kept in quasi order by a cohort of censors 
in faded uniforms, called " chuckerouts " by the young- 
sters, from their proclivity for " chucking out " too 
unruly lads. Indeed, one of our prime diversions at the 
show was the " Look sharp ! The chuckerout 's got his 
eye on ye ! " piped every now and then from the mist that 
clouded the rear of the auditorium. It cost a penny to be 
a gallery god, and twopence to get into the alleged 
" choice " seats of the orchestra circle in this Temple 
of Thespis. The youngsters got their money's worth. 
The programme advertised some forty events, and the per- 
formance lasted from seven o'clock till early morning — 
making one think of the Chinese play which Artemus 
Ward describes as beginning with the birth of the hero 



8 BY-WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

and continuing several months until he is killed or married. 
The writer remembers vividly a characteristic and 
funny episode at this theatre some years ago. The long 
play of the evening was a sanguinary version of the 
" Old Curiosity shop " of Dickens, and by a common stage 
paradox the part of the villain Quilp had been given to the 
only really good actor in the cast. How in the world 
this man, whose acting would have done credit to a lead- 
ing part at Wallack's, ever got among that crowd of fifth- 
rate actors is hard to imagine. Perhaps he was a new 
theatrical luminary first rising on the Whitechapel horizon, 
or more likely a good actor whose bad habits had driven 
him from the West End stage. However, there he was, 
acting a realistic villain among stage blockheads, a veri- 
table martyr surrounded by sticks. But his intense realism 
was unpopular with the boys, and as the play went on he 
became the bugbear of the piece. He played too well for 
the youngsters, who were so carried away by his vivid 
portrayal that they began to think he was a villain in 
dead earnest. Every time he appeared a torrent of hisses, 
cat-calls, and hoots met him, and when at last, with his 
meshes all drawn around his victims, he exulted in his 
triumph, the howls rose to such a pitch that it looked 
as though Quilp would be a crushed tragedian. The 
" chuckerouts " had a lively time of it for a while, but at 
last restored order by decimating the audience. The 
play proceeded, and Quilp went to the final destiny of 
all stage villains amid shrieks of approving delight. 



THE BOWERY OF LONDON. 9 

Another of the Whitechapel theatres is as large as 
the foregoing playhouse, but higher priced and better 
toned. Here the " chuckerout " is superseded by a beefy 
presiding officer at a table in front of the orchestra. 
He bellows out the entries on the programme, and in the 
intervals divides his time between big mugs of ale and 
lusty thumps with a gavel. Barring his dress coat, he 
looks for all the world like the chairman of a Tammany 
primary ; and as a presiding officer, so far as keeping order 
is concerned, is quite as signal a failure. 

But there are rifts even in the gloomy shadows of life 
along Whitechapel. One night there was advertised in 
large print a stereopticon lecture on " America." A penny 
gave us admission to a rough building with rougher seats, 
where a thousand or more from the humble classes had 
gathered. The lecturer in the darkened room took his 
audience with him on a trip from New York up the 
Hudson, thence across to Niagara Falls, and then to 
Washington, illustrating each point of interest with views 
on the canvas. Suddenly, while describing the Capitol at 
Washington, he flashed upon the screen a picture of the 
statue of Abraham Lincoln. There was a momentary 
hush, then the first applause of the evening came forth 
like a burst of thunder. A more impressive scene followed 
when, without a word of announcement, the face of Gar- 
field appeared on the screen. The crowd knew it 
instantly. They rose to their feet and gave it roar after 
roar of welcome, outburst succeeding outburst, so that 



lo jBY-h^ays of nature and life. 

after several minutes the lecturer could scarcely proceed. 
The scene was one to be recalled for a lifetime — the dusky- 
room, the swaying audience, the swelling plaudits, and 
this gathering from the very sink of London paying its 
tribute to our two martyrs. How sharply it carried 
memory back to the dark days of civil strife, when these 
humble men were with us and England's proudest 
against us ! How it emphasized that more recent 
sympathy which went out to us from both England's 
highest and lowest when our second presidential martyr 
fell, suffered so long, and died ! This was no formal 
demonstration, but a sincere and spontaneous burst of 
feeling from men who had no motive save to speak their 
hearts. Let us record it as something even more signifi- 
cant, and as a sign of that common sympathy which 
glows beneath the surface of two nations which are one 
in kinship, one in their civic liberty, and one in their 
aspiration toward the ideals of human progress. 



CURIOSITIES OF ZOOLOGY. 

IF the American visitor to the London Zoological Gar- 
dens can make the rounds under the guidance of Mr. 
A. D. Bartlett, the old superintendent, he will find far 
more to instruct and amuse than the mere spectacle of 
the best collection of birds, beasts, and reptiles in the 
world. For fifty years Mr. Bartlett has been connected 
with the gardens, and for twenty years he has been the 
active superintendent. In the Hne of his duties he has 
been forced to make a special study of the habits of each 
creature, and his theoretical knowledge of natural history 
has been supplemented by a vast array of practical facts 
that have come directly under his eye. If his reminiscen- 
ces of all the curious things which he has seen in the 
garden could be printed, they would fill a volume which 
would be no small addition to what we know already 
about animal life. 

Outside of its spectacular quality the world-famous 
" Zoo " has been of great scientific value in two ways. 
Not only has it disclosed natural traits of the animals in 
their wild state, which had been unobserved and never 
would have been known unless the creatures had been 
kept in long captivity, but it has also shown animal traits 
peculiar to the captive condition. I can illustrate this by 



12 BV.fVAYS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

a single example, itself one of the most curious facts 
brought out during the history of the garden. It has 
been found, as is commonly known, that the carnivorous 
animals, like the lions, tigers, bears, and even hyenas, can 
be readily tamed when brought to the gardens young, 
while the adult animals remain often fierce and untamable 
to the last. But the effect with certain of the vegetable- 
eating creatures — deer, goats, and wild sheep — has been 
precisely the reverse. If taken as adults they are shy and 
ready to fly at the least alarm ; but when captured as 
fawns and reared they become savage and dangerous, a 
constant source of peril and fear to their keepers. Mr. 
Bartlett explains this by the following line of reasoning : 
The deer, for instance, in their wild condition, are naturally 
even more fierce than the carnivora, but have the trait of 
timidity when brought face to face with unfamiliar ob- 
jects. Thus the bucks, though they shun man, will fight 
to the death with each other, and will stand at bay or 
attack instantly the smaller wild animals of prey. In the 
same way, when familiarized with man, their native fierce- 
ness asserts itself. They attack him fearlessly, and in- 
stead of being tamed by confinement, the restraint only 
serves to make them ferocious. 

A similarly curious paradox has been observed at the 
gardens in the case of certain birds. The dove is the 
prescriptive bird of Eros and the poets. The budding 
Tennysons and Longfellows, however, who want to utilize 
the wealth of metaphor drawn from the soft cooings and 



CURIOSITIES OF ZOOLOGY. 13 

gentle dalliance of the birds of Venus, must keep away 
from the Zoological Gardens. It seems hard and harsh 
to upset at once the legends of mythology and the imagery 
of the verse-makers, but the rude fact must be asserted, 
that the dove, as shown by experience with many speci- 
mens of his tribe at the " Zoo," is any thing but a well- 
behaved bird. Besides other bad habits, he is a vindictive 
and relentless brawler, and during the love season is in 
constant warfare. Nature fortunately has not given him 
sharp and fatal weapons, but with the joint of his wing he 
can strike a blow of amazing force and precision. The 
mellow cooing which the poets ascribe to affection is, far 
more likely, a challenge to combat than a gentle note of 
love. But, on the other hand, certain birds of prey— the 
eagle, the vulture, and the buzzard— to which we attribute 
all the vices, become in captivity at the gardens most 
staid and reputable birds, dwelling together in harmony 
and giving no trouble to their keepers. They cannot 
change their diet, but they succeed in establishing a 
character for domesticity and good behavior that some of 
their more reputable companions would do well to 
emulate. 

Out of a dozen curious stories that could be told about 
the nimble denizens of the monkey-house, let me select 
two, both connected with apes that have now gone to the 
happy peanut-ground of monkeys. A chimpanzee named 
" Joe," who came to the gardens some years ago, used to be 
kept in a separate compartment of the big cage. Every 



14 BV-fVAYS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

morning his keeper used to let Joe out for an airing, and 
the little fellow was the terror of his mates, leaping like 
a flash around the outside of the cage, pulling their tails, 
and abusing his liberty in the most shameful fashion. By 
and by came the hour when the visitors began to arrive 
and when Joe had to be shut up again in his cage. Then 
Joe would rebel. He refused to come to his keeper, Mr. 
Sutton, who might as well have tried to cage the light- 
ning as catch by ordinary means the nimble rascal leaping 
over the outside of the big monkey-cage. No blandish- 
ments or dainties would allure crafty Joe, who, sitting 
high on the upper bars, would make the most horrible 
grimaces at his pursuer. But Joe, though of male gender, 
had two feminine failings — curiosity and fear ; and these 
were used to foil his cunning. Near one end of the 
monkey-house was a large dark hole out of which came a 
gas-pipe. Having first set open the door of Joe's com- 
partment, Mr. Sutton would approach the dark hole, 
peering in as if he saw a ghost. Joe would instantly stop 
his contortions, descend from the cage, follow behind Mr. 
Sutton, and, like him, look earnestly into the hole. Then, 
with a sudden movement, as though the apparition were 
emerging, Mr. Sutton would retreat, making every gesture 
of fear. Instantly Joe's courage and wits would forsake 
him. Chattering with fright he would fly to his cage for 
refuge. The door was shut and he was a captive anew. 
The most singular feature of it all was that Joe never 
seemed to learn the trick. It was repeated day after day 
for many months and with unvarying success. 



CURIOSITIES OF ZOOLOGY. 1$ 

One of the by-gone heroines of the monkey-house, " Miss 
Jenny," also died some years ago. She came from India, 
and had a peculiar parting of the hair upon the head, 
marking her as of a new species, which gave the men of 
science a good deal of trouble to classify and name. 
Among Jenny's dissipations was one which Mr. Darwin 
never ought to have overlooked as a simian prototype of a 
later human vice. Other monkeys at the garden have 
gone through the motions of smoking, but Miss Jenny 
was the first that ever smoked a pipe full of real tobacco. 
She did it too with unction and enjoyment, and once she 
snatched a half-smoked cigar from the mouth of a visitor 
and coolly finished it. Sometimes she would take a bottle 
of ale, and, holding it with her hind foot in a position infi- 
nitely comic, drink down long draughts in the intervals 
between her puffs. 

The chief of the singular birds at the " Zoo " is kept in 
a secluded cage, and can be seen only through the good 
offices of his keeper and a fee. His Latin name, particu- 
larly if it described half his accomplishments, would be so 
long that we pass it by and choose the more prosaic title 
of hornbill. It is a bird with a body much like that of 
the eagle, black and white in color. Its head is fitted with 
an enormous bill as large as the human hand, sharp-pointed 
and crowned with a horny plate as large as a butter dish. 
Mr. Hornbill's keeper takes his stand ten feet away and 
tosses grapes at the bird so rapidly that the human eye 
can hardly follow them through the air. But the eye of 



l6 B Y- WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

the hornbill is quicker, and he catches them every one in 
his bill, now depressing it, now raising it in air, and again 
turning it sideways according to the angle at which the 
grape is delivered to him ; and when half a dozen grapes 
are shot at him in succession as rapidly as the keeper can 
do it, the bird usually misses but one. If a grape were 
only a base-ball, the hornbill could give points to the best 
of our professional first basemen. The hornbill and toucan 
(which also has a huge bill, sometimes ten inches long) 
have a funny way of feeding from the ground. They pick 
up the food in the extremities of their bills ; then, with a 
toss of the head, open the mouth, and the food describes 
the arc of a circle, falling into the gullet with absolute cer- 
tainty. Some years ago under the hornbill's perch was 
found what looked like a fig enclosing a mass of slightly 
digested grapes and other food. It was supposed for a 
time that the bird had disgorged his own stomach. The 
fig-like mass was passed over to the dissector of the 
Zoological Society, and Mr. Hornbill was watched care- 
fully for any ill effects. Presently the bird, which mean- 
time had kept as well as usual, threw up its " stomach " 
again, and ere long the dissector reported that what 
seemed a stomach was only an inner lining formed by a 
thick secretion, the disgorging of which was a natural 
function of the bird. Soon after it was found that other 
birds in the " Zoo" had the same curious habit. It seems 
that the hornbill, of which there are altogether some six 
species living in Africa, Hindostan, and Burmah, have a 



CURIOSITIES OF ZOOLOGY. 1/ 

singular way of nesting, of which the habit above described 
is an incident. The male takes the female to a hollow 
tree. There the mother-bird builds a nest of her own 
feathers and lays her eggs. Then the male builds up the 
hole with clay, and keeps his mate a close prisoner until 
the eggs are hatched. In the clay is left a small hole, 
through which the female protrudes her bill, and the male 
bird keeps her well provided with dainties, gathering them 
in his stomach and then disgorging them in the pouch 
mentioned above. If the female breaks down the clayey 
barrier the male instantly kills her. During the period of 
incubation the labors of the male make him so weak and 
sickly that he often yields to any sudden change of 
weather, and dies. But the female waxes fat as a Thanks- 
giving turkey on her lord's devotion, and the natives often 
seek her out when on her nest and kill her as a great 
delicacy. 

Other rare birds have shown their strange habits in the 
captivity of the " Zoo." A bird called the " greater vasa 
parrakeet " entered the gardens as an adult bird on the 
30th of June, 1830, and has never touched water since. It 
is still in the best of health, and its case, and that of other 
birds at the gardens, prove conclusively that certain kinds 
of feathered creatures never need water to sustain life. A 
strange biped from Australia, the satin-bower bird, builds 
in the love-making season a platform and long gallery of 
twigs, adorned with shells, feathers, and brilliant strings. 
On their balcony the pair go through all kinds of queer 



1 8 BV-IVAVS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

posturings and enact a kind of a bird love-scene of the 
Romeo and Juliet type. The darter, a bird from Florida, 
shaped like a heron, with a bill sharp as a needle, goes 
fishing in unique fashion. Let a small living fish be tossed 
in the tank, and the darter dives and swims for it under 
-water. The fish goes like an arrow, but the darter like an 
electric spark. The bird overtakes the fish, stabs it with 
his sharp bill, slightly opened so as to hold the prey by a 
series of saw-like projections on the inner edges. Then 
the bird comes to the surface, tosses its prey into the air, 
catches it descending, and swallows it in a trice. The 
next-door neighbor of the darter is a penguin that rivals 
the Florida bird in the speed with which it swims under 
water, never using its webbed feet, but, instead, propelling 
itself with the paddles placed where the wings belong on 
an ordinary bird. All these are but a small fraction of the 
singular facts, many of them of scientific interest, disclosed 
by the bird life of the " Zoo." 

The reptile-house, with its magnificent collection of 
snakes, one a python twenty-three feet long, has also its 
fund of incident shadowed by a single tragedy. Some 
years ago the keeper, when in liquor, took the cobra from 
its cage. The reptile bit him, and, spite of quick anti- 
dotes, he died in twenty minutes. In 1850 a boa-con- 
strictor swallowed his blanket, and after holding it thirty- 
three days disgorged it. The careful scrutiny of the 
ways of the python and other snakes of the constrictor 
species sheds important scientific light on their habits of 



CURIOSITIES OF ZOOLOGY. I9 

preying. They invariably throw themselves from the 
tail, grasping with it a tree or rock. Having once seized 
the prey with their jaws, and thus secured what we may 
call a new fulcrum from the other end of the body, they 
proceed to constrict and kill. The alleged habit of saliva- 
ting their prey is all moonshine. The story doubtless 
arose from the habit which the constrictors have of feel- 
ing the dead prey carefully with the nose so as to find the 
head and begin swallowing. In the paroxysms of hunger 
the constrictors are fierce and aggressive. If two of them 
at such a period happen to grasp the same rabbit or duck 
with which they are fed, the larger and stronger snake not 
only swallows the prey but also the smaller serpent, which 
is either unwilling or unable to let go its hold. This has the 
savor of fiction, but I am satisfied that the keeper who told 
it was not drawing the long bow. In fact, the Zoological 
Society has lost one or two valuable serpents in this way, 
and the keepers have to be careful in feeding the con- 
strictors to avoid accidents of the sort. If both creatures 
seize the prey at once, the keeper instantly takes it away. 
The jaws of the constrictors are curiously formed, and ap- 
parently fall apart at the lower extremities when the rep- 
tile is gorging, a muscular contraction bringing the ex- 
tremities back to place when the prey is swallowed. 
Among the more striking curiosities of the reptile-house, 
is a snake-eating serpent from India, for which the keeper 
has on hand a constant supply of young snakes caught 
in England. 



20 B Y- WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

The experience of the keepers at the " Zoo " has shown 
that there is a good deal of fallacy in the common belief 
that the good-will of animals is won by feeding them. 
Some years ago a new keeper was put in charge of one of 
the buildings containing large animals. The man was a 
sober and steady fellow, watchful of his duties, and giving 
careful attention to the feed and cleanliness of the brutes. 
But he utterly failed to conciliate them, and their aver- 
sion and anger when he entered their cages became the 
talk and wonder of the other keepers. Mr. Bartlett 
looked into the matter, as it is a cardinal point in the 
treatment of the brutes that they should be kept good- 
tempered and contented. The superintendent at last 
found out the secret. The keeper never talked to the 
animals, and as he could not learn to utter the expressive 
and kindly sounds which the animals love to hear, even 
though they do not understand the words, the man had 
at last to be dismissed. Mr. Bartlett never feeds the 
creatures, except now and then with a bit of biscuit or 
some other trifle. But he has the gift of kindly talk, and 
in consequence they many of them know him and come 
to his call as quickly as to the voice of their keepers. 
But no care or training prevents the animals from getting 
now and then into wicked moods. A female hippopota- 
mus, a few years ago, after bringing forth three young, 
became so savage that it was feared she would tear her 
building into splinters. No keeper dared to enter her 
house, and the food and water supplied her through a 



CURIOSITIES OF ZOOLOGY. 21 

hole broken in the roof she refused to touch for days. 
The great African elephant " Jumbo," now of inter- 
national fame, eleven feet high, weighing some ten 
thousand pounds, and probably the largest beast in 
the world, used to be tractable and pleasant when out- 
side his house and carrying his load of children along the 
broad walk of the gardens; but in his enclosure he 
was often wicked and dangerous. The frequent repeti- 
tion of these angry moods was the secret reason that 
induced the sale of the huge beast to Mr. Barnum. 
During a part of the year Jumbo had already 
shown signs of the approach of the period of elephant 
puberty, which is revealed by the secretion of a viscous 
fluid on a gland of the. neck. This is a peculiarly dan- 
gerous crisis in the life of the elephant species. The ani- 
mal for several months in the year becomes often almost 
mad. In India, at such a juncture, the keepers beat the 
poor brute pitilessly, or, confining him in large holes, 
starve him until the passion is subdued. Now and then 
one of these mad leviathans escapes and for weeks runs 
a deadly muck against man and beast. They tell at the 
" Zoo " a story of one of these " rogue " elephants — as 
they are locally dubbed in India — which in that country, 
some years ago, escaped from its herd. For weeks it 
kept a region as large as a British county in terror. 
Lurking at the edge of a jungle during the day it would 
rush out in the dusk upon some adjacent village, wrecking 
the flimsy habitations of the natives, slaughtering ruth- 



22 BV-fVAYS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

lessly men, women, and children, and driving the fugitives 
in panic to the bush. Many and inventive were the snares 
contrived for the outlawed beast, but it showed the cun- 
ning which sometimes marks human insanity in eluding 
them all. After it had slain scores of people, this wild 
fellow one day, his period of madness having expired, re- 
turned quietly and took his old place in a tame herd. 
The marks of some two hundred bullet-wounds, none of 
which had been serious, were counted on his body. In 
selling Jumbo to Mr. Barnum, the theory of the directors 
of the " Zoo " was that fellowship with a large herd of 
elephants, together with the active travel of a circus, 
would avert the threatened humor ; an hypothesis which 
the sequel has shown to be well founded. 

The cost of the creatures in the " Zoo " varies in each 
species almost as much as the prices of horses, being fixed 
by the size, health, and perfection of each specimen. The 
hippopotamus heads the list, a good specimen well grown 
being worth from $8,000 to $10,000; a well-shaped ele- 
phant, full grown, can be bought for $2,000; a rhinoceros 
for about $3,000; a large python for $1,000; a tiger or 
lion for about $400 or $500 ; a bear from $250 to $500 ; a 
zebra for $1,500, and a good specimen of a giraffe for 
about the same sum. The chimpanzee leads the monkey 
tribe in value, costing about $250 — the orang-outang and 
gorilla by their scarcity being ruled out of the list. On 
their triangular ground of seventeen acres the Zoological 
Society have now about four thousand specimens of the 



CURIOSITIES OF ZOOLOGY. 23 

various creatures, whose tastes are carefully catered to in 
the spacious enclosures, the neat and clean houses, and the 
weedy pools where their captivity is passed. Each year 
there are about 6cx),ooo visitors to the gardens, or almost 
exactly the number that visit the British Miuseum, al- 
though admission to the latter is free, while the " Zoo " 
charges a shilling on all days but Mondays, when the price 
is sixpence. The best collection of living animals in the 
world can be seen at the "Zoo," therefore, for twelve 
cents. The yearly receipts of the Zoological Society from 
all sources are about $125,000,. and the expenses about the 
same, but the accumulated value of its property during its 
fifty-seven years of existence is incalculable. It has gath- 
ered, along with its living curiosities, a select and costly 
zoological library. With no design of money-making, 
never declaring dividends, and finding its richest reward 
in the delight and instruction of the public, the society 
has reached a basis of prosperity as enduring as it is well 
deserved. 



A BRITISH ELECTION-DAY. 

ON the night of the third of March, eighteen hun- 
dred and eighty-two, there closed in the English 
city of Northampton an era of public ferment and uproar 
more violent than the oldest resident of the borough could 
recall in all its political annals. A week before, the gov- 
ernment had issued its writ, calling for the election of a 
" fit and proper person " to represent the city in place of 
the famous radical, Bradlaugh, expelled from Parliament. 
That persistent agitator, who had already been " shuttle- 
cocked," as the phrase went, between Northampton and 
the British Commons several times, presented himself 
once more as a candidate. After hanging long on the 
skirts of the Commons, refusing to take the oath recog- 
nizing a God, he had brought the controversy to a focus 
by boldly advancing to the bar of the House, and, Bible 
in hand, administering the oath to himself. This fright- 
ful breach of venerable tradition, and the consequent ex- 
pulsion from the Commons, sent him back once more for 
vindication to his Northampton electors, and Edward 
Corbett, a local land-owner, had come forward to contest 
the seat in the anti-Bradlaugh interest. Words are faint 
and feeble to portray the asperity of that conflict. Ram- 
pant Conservatism on the one side was pitted against 



A BRITISH ELECTION.DA Y. 2$ 

furious Radicalism on the other. Personal hatreds, re- 
ligious enthusiasm, the fury of sects, the jealousy of class, 
—every passion, good or bad, that excites the voter, was 
appealed to, and gave sting to a canvass which ended 
decisively in sending Bradlaugh back panoplied for a fresh 
bout with the Commons. 

Northampton, the chosen battle-ground of Bradlaugh — 
who, however, does not live in the borough, — is a hot-bed 
of British Radicalism. It is a city of about fifty-three 
thousand inhabitants spread over a large area of rising 
ground sixty-seven miles northwest of London. It may 
be described more figuratively as the Lynn of England. 
Saint Crispin is its tutelary genius. It bristles with the 
smoking chimneys of shoe factories, and I have heard it 
estimated that at least half its population is engaged in 
leather industries alone. A large proportion of its area is 
covered with the lowly dwellings of factory-men. Women 
loaded down with shoes which they are taking home to 
finish by hand are met along every block, and a single 
factory gives work to more than a thousand hands. Of 
course, this city of shoemakers has been fertile ground 
for trades-unions, leagues, and all sorts of labor combina- 
tions ; and a plentiful crop of " isms " has sprung«up with 
them. The Bible brushes in constant warfare with social- 
ism or Tom Paine, and the faithful and faithless of North- 
ampton meet in perpetual encounter. The registered 
voters of the borough number 8,321, of whom all but a 
few hundred cast their ballots on that election-day. 



26 B Y. WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

These figures give a significant hint as to the inclusive 
character of the British qualification for the suffrage. In 
an English borough election every voter of legal age must 
have been a resident for at least a year, must have paid 
his taxes, and must either be owner or tenant of a sepa- 
rate dwelling, or the occupier of lodgings worth ten 
pounds sterling a year unfurnished. It will be seen that 
Northampton, though it is under these restrictions, turns 
out almost as many voters as an American city of the 
same size. 

Entering the borough on the eve of the appeal to the 
polls it was easy to see that some momentous event was 
impending. Crowds lined the streets, and the open 
spaces of the city were filled with men earnest in gesture 
and prompt to back opinions by that supreme argument 
of Englishmen, a bet. Gangs of boys made the air reso- 
nant with yells, and frowzy women circulated among 
the crowd talking politics in a key as high as their own 
morals were low. The gin-shops were all doing a royal 
trade, and, in truth, the amount of drunkenness eclipsed 
any thing to be seen at an American election. The out- 
put of literature in the week's canvass was prodigious. 
Walls, sign-posts, and fences fairly bulged with calls to 
patriots of every stripe. Irishmen, Dissenters, Working- 
men, " Christians of every denomination," and especially 
that focal object of the hand-bill, the " moderate man," — 
who in that particular juncture figured as prominently as 
a chairman during a tie vote, — were all appealed to lustily 



A BRITISH ELECTION-DA Y. V 

by placard. The bills were graduated from a simple 
'* Bradlaugh" in letters five feet long down to a scrap of 
paper giving selections from those really outrageous utter- 
ances against religion and morals which have made of him 
a fair target. It was evident that the great majority of 
the literary effusions emanated from the anti-Bradlaugh 
camp. This, however, was to be attributed to the weak 
points in the record of the man, rather than to the sug- 
gestion made by a Conservative, that Bradlaugh's ad- 
herents could neither read nor write. The merit and 
temper of the poetry of that local crisis may be judged 
by the annexed extracts from two separate outbursts of 
the Northampton muses : 

" Stand firm ! my lads, against our common foe, 
We '11 let them know, we '11 let them know ! 
Their great Iconoclast we '11 soon lay low : 

From such we will be free. 
Our virtuous wives and daughters he '11 insult no more. 
Against our Church and Bible all in vain he '11 roar ; 
With Corbett at our head we '11 drive him from our door — 

From such we will be free. 

" Chorus— 'T is Edward Corbett shall our member be. 
We '11 show the Rads we can be free ; 
And down with all their hateful company — 
For Corbett shall our member be. 



O may the year that 's dawned on us with bright and sunny skies 
See England from her ashes once more like a Phoenix rise ! 
At home be peace, and o'er the sea her prestige gained again, 
And Gladstone and his Cabinet replaced by better men. 



28 BY- WAYS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

"Chorus — Then wake, ye sons of Albion, from apathy awake ! 

No longer let such councils guide — such policy forsake ; 
Assert once more your ancient might, rout dastards from their 

den. 
Throw off their trammels, show the world again you *re English- 



Whatever may be thought of the Northampton poets, 
there is no doubt that the local politicians were up to the 
subtleties of their trade. A few days before, Mr. Morley, a 
benefactor of the London workingmen and a Liberal, had 
written a letter opposing Bradlaugh's reelection. This 
was printed and placarded. Then the Bradlaugh men 
dug up an old letter of Morley favoring the election of 
Bradlaugh, and, leaving out the date, pasted it over the 
placard of their foes. 

A call for a Bradlaugh meeting at the hall of the 
Northampton Corn Exchange, on the eve before the elec- 
tion, gave the writer an opportunity to witness an English 
mass-meeting. The hall, one hundred and fifty feet long 
by sixty feet wide, was jammed with a seething crowd of 
Bradlaugh men, all standing, for in the body of the house 
there are no seats. On a platform at one side, flanked 
by a body of well-dressed supporters, the candidate 
harangued the surging mass of human beings in front of 
him. Bradlaugh is a powerful speaker, and on that night, 
when he dealt in declamation and epithet, rather than 
argument, he appeared at his best. He is a stout man, 
some five feet eight inches high, with a moon face, re- 
lieved by a high and massive forehead. His voice, which 



A BRITISH ELECTION-DA Y. 29 

is his greatest gift, is clear, resonant, and penetrating ; he 
delivers his words fluently, and his whole appearance and 
rhetoric constantly suggest Mr. Beecher. As to the pop- 
ular element in the gathering, it was far more boisterous 
and demonstrative than our American mass-meetings. 
Every appeal of the orator for a show of hands brought 
up a vast upraising of soiled digits, followed by rousing 
cheers. The meeting, otherwise impressive, was marred 
by one discreditable episode. A well-dressed man who 
had held up his hand in opposition to the speaker was in- 
vited by Bradlaugh to come to the platform and be heard. 
Bradlaugh called for silence, which lasted only till the 
new-comer began his speech, which was drowned instantly 
amid a tempest of hoots and yells. After speaking a few 
words in dumb pantomime, the visitor took his seat, and 
then Bradlaugh had the effrontery to cite this case to the 
crowd as a praiseworthy bit of Radical toleration for free 
speech, and as a piece of liberality which his opponents 
never yet had conceded. It was, on the other hand, 
really a fair type of the treatment the Northampton Rad- 
icals give the Conservatives even at their own meetings. 
Not a single public Conservative gathering had been held 
that week but had been broken up by the rabble. If a 
Conservative, on the contrary, attended a meeting of 
Radicals and disclosed his political views, he was almost 
certain of rough treatment, and before he emerged his 
ordinary coat was pretty sure to be changed to one of the 
dress pattern bi-furcated at the top. 



30 B Y- WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

On election-day from early morning up to four o'clock 
in the afternoon, the voting was in progress at twenty-one 
polling places. The streets were thronged with partisans 
of both sides decked in the party colors — the Radicals 
wearing the so-called " Republican " cockade of mauve, 
green, and white, the Liberals red and white, the Con- 
servatives orange and blue. It was noteworthy that during 
the day scarcely a Liberal cockade appeared, and that the 
rival tints were really Radical and Conservative. This 
display of vivid hues, which, besides ribbons and cock- 
ades, appears in the decoration of hats, in the banners on 
some of the houses, and in the hangings of the many car- 
riages bringing the voters to the polls, lends a back- 
ground of brilliancy to an English election in marked 
contrast with an American voting day. Order was 
guaranteed by four hundred soldiers from neighboring 
cities — some of them much the worse for a night's royster- 
ing — and a body of several hundred imported policemen and 
constables. But the crowd, as a rule, though boisterous, was 
good-tempered, and was immensely tickled by the spectacle 
of a prominent Radical and worker for Bradlaugh, who 
wore unconsciously all day on his back a Conservative 
cockade which an opponent had slyly pinned there. 
Considering the amount of drunkenness, the good 
behavior of the lower classes was remarkable, and could 
hardly have been equalled by an American rabble under 
like conditions. 

The riotous balloting of the old Eatanswill order has 



A BRITISH ELECTION-DAY. 3I 

passed out of British politics forever. The nominations 
at the hustings, the speeches of the candidates to an 
accompaniment of rotten eggs, brickbats, and opposition 
brass bands, the balloting which could continue for days 
provided only a ballot was polled every legal hour, sur- 
vive now only in the literature of the past. The nomina- 
tion nowadays is a tame affair, only the candidate and 
three friends besides the legal officers being allowed to be 
present. The actual voting is even more prosaic. Each 
legal voter, after securing registration, is given a registra- 
tion number. This, when he goes to vote, he tells to one 
of the poll-clerks, or if he forgets his number he gives his 
name, and his number is ascertained from the poll-books. 
Then he receives a ballot bearing, besides the names of 
the candidates, the voter's registered number, which is 
also entered on the stub from which the ballot is torn, 
like a bank check. The ballot is stamped on the back 
with a general mark to certify its genuineness, the voter 
steps aside to a screen, marks with a pencil or pen a cross 
opposite the name of his candidate, goes back to the box, 
shows the back of the ballot with the affixed stamp to the 
clerk, and drops the paper in the box. Through the good 
offices of an acquaintance I got admission to one of the 
Northampton polling halls. Nothing could be more com- 
monplace than the rough set of board tables, the stout 
wooden ballot-box mounted in a chair, and the mechanical 
routine of voting. But it is well worth considering whether 
this English system, with its checks on fraud, has not feat- 



32 BY-fVAYS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

ures worth adopting in our own country. While it neces- 
sarily discloses some votes to the polling officers who 
chance to know an elector's registered number, the obsta- 
cles to " split " tickets, the certainty of detecting any 
" stuffing " of boxes, and the heavy penalties attached to 
any betrayal of trust on the part of the poll officers, make 
the scheme well-nigh perfect as an electoral device. 

At four o'clock in the afternoon the ballot-boxes were 
sealed up and taken under police escort to the City Hall, 
where the count began. As the time drew on for a declara- 
tion of the vote the excitement deepened. Among the 
Conservatives gathered at " The George " hotel the first 
reports, telling of several hundred majority for Corbett, 
created general good-humor and enthusiasm. Then came 
a dismal rumor of two hundred majority for Bradlaugh, 
and as this sank to the actual figures and was partly con- 
firmed, cheerfulness gave way to universal gloom. It was 
curious to see how the mood, the sentiments, even the 
phrases of the people present reproduced what one hears 
in the camp of the defeated on an American election night. 
Fears about the prosperity of the community, threats 
never to cast another vote, charges of treachery and broken 
pledges, all attested that three thousand miles of blue water 
make small difference with human nature under political 
reverses. Meanwhile, outside, the cries of the victors 
began to be heard. Ten thousand men, women, and 
children gathered around the City Hall, waiting the official 
return. Finally appeared the Mayor with a sheet of paper 



A BRITISH ELECTION-DA Y. 33 

in his hand. A crier, resplendent in red and gold uniform, 
rang a bell, the vote was read with its majority of one 
hundred and eight for Bradlaugh, the crowd shouted, and 
the successful candidate offered his thanks and congratu- 
lations. He had indeed won a most signal and unlooked- 
for victory over a powerful combination of elements. 
The Irish vote of Northampton went against him bodily 
for his record on the Coercion Act ; his rank atheism and 
loose social notions had alienated the Dissenters ; moderate 
Liberals repudiated him as an annoyance to Mr. Gladstone ; 
and the Conservatives polled their last man against him. 
He conquered by the sheer strength of his personal fol- 
lowing of Radicals, slightly reinforced by a few ultra Lib- 
erals, by a small body of voters who believe he has been 
badly treated, and by the still smaller body of erratic 
men to be found in every community who are fond of 
political sensations and who will vote for any thing " just 
to see the fur fly." 



ENGLAND'S GUN FOUNDRY. 

A LITTLE city a few miles down the Thames from 
London holds in the military and naval affairs of 
England a position akin to that of the great London itself 
in the larger sphere of British trade. No foreign foe can 
threaten England's peace, no warlike plan be devised, no 
scheme of colonial defence be meditated, but that they are 
quickly betrayed in the huge gun factories and barracks of 
Woolwich. The city and its arsenal are a kind of martial 
thermometer, with a gun-mould for a tube, in which the 
rise and fall of molten metal registers the foreign policy 
of that empire whose drum-beat traditionally circles the 
world. 

The Government gun-works in Woolwich, which give a 
national and even an international fame to the city, cover 
an area of about a hundred acres, fronting the Thames. 
In size, in amount of war material produced, and in the 
perfection of the plant, they are rivalled by no existing 
works of the kind except those of Herr Krupp, at Essen, 
in Germany. In time of peace the Woolwich gun factories 
give work to about five thousand men, who labor only for 
a few hours a day. But at the signal of war every depart- 
ment is fully manned, the number of workmen rises to 
fifteen or twenty thousand, all the machinery is set 

34 



ENGLAND'S GUN FOUNDRY. 35 

in motion night and day, visitors are rigidly excluded, 
and the whole martial city bustles with new life and 
vigor. Even in peace, however, access to the works by 
visitors not British subjects is exceedingly difficult. The 
shilling or half-crown so potent elsewhere in England 
avails little at the Woolwich Arsenal. The American 
visitor who wants to see the factories has to make 
application to his Minister at London, who, in turn, 
must apply to a member of the British Cabinet, and 
tedious delays and endless snarls of red-tape obstruct the 
entry of a foreigner if he cannot, with the good fortune 
of the writer, secure the good-will of one of the mana- 
gers of the works, and go in by the back door. British 
subjects can visit the works on a stated day each week, 
but many of the factories are closed to them, and the 
guide to whom they are entrusted seems chosen with a 
special view either to reticence or stupidity. 

One of the first and most interesting of the structures 
seen by the visitor, on the left, immediately after entering 
the arsenal grounds, is the projectile house. Here' are 
stored for exhibition specimens of most of the shot and 
shell used for field and naval ordnance. They include 
not merely the missiles now in use, but what may be called 
an historic series, beginning with the stone balls of medi- 
aeval times, and coming down to the perfected Palliser of 
the present day. The eye wanders amazed amid the 
medley of chain-shot, percussion shells, grape, canister, 
and single bullets of numberless shapes and sizes. The 



$6 B Y- WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

monarch of them all is the conical Palliser shot used for 
the hundred-ton guns on the British iron-clads. The shot 
is about four and a half feet high, as it stands upright on 
its blunt base. It is twenty inches in diameter at the 
place where the conical slope begins, and it weighs nine- 
teen hundred and twenty pounds. To make one of these 
huge missiles is alone a task of vast labor, using up days 
of work by hand in the various processes of shaping, 
polishing, and chilling the point. This method of chill- 
ing, now applied to all the large projectiles of the British 
Navy, is curious and instructive. The point of the cone 
is heated, then masses of cold iron are set against it. 
The effect of the contact, for some cause yet, I believe, 
unknown to science, is to extract the sulphur from the 
metal, leaving its fibre solid, hard, and tough. When 
fractured the chilled part of the big bullet shows a 
clear, bright, and firm rearrangement of the particles — a 
kind of recrystallization of them — in vivid contrast with 
the duller hue and rougher particles of the unchilled iron 
in the body of the missile. In the projectile house is pre- 
served also every device in the shape of bullets or cannon- 
balls which has been suggested even to the most eccen- 
tric fancy of the British inventor. Among these whimsi- 
cal missiles is one in the shape of a ball covered with 
spikes, and another is made by stringing grape-shot on a 
rope, the inventor asserting stoutly that his cord and bul- 
lets combined would cut in twain whole battalions and 
revolutionize warfare. His invention, like many others, 



ENGLAND'S GUN FOUNDRY. yj 

has been consigned to the limbo of mere curiosities. The 
many inventions for exploding the various shells with 
precision and at an exact instant of time scarcely attract 
notice. But on this point, at first sight so unimportant, 
the whole efficiency of the shell depends. On it there has 
been spent more of care and thought than on any other 
secondary branch of British gunnery, until now the ex- 
plosion of the shell is timed down to the smallest fraction 
of a second after leaving the gun. 

In a structure next to the Museum of Projectiles bullets 
are made, and some old-fashioned notions of bullet-making 
roughly dispelled by modern machinery. A large cylinder 
filled with two or three tons of molten lead is fitted with 
a plunger, reminding one of a huge perpendicular syringe. 
In the top are two semicircular pipes, through which the 
molten metal is forced, partly cooling on its way. The 
two half-circular strips of lead suddenly emerge at a point 
of junction of the pipes in contact with each other. Just 
here comes one of the most wonderful mechanical pro- 
cesses of the whole arsenal. Instead of keeping on as 
two separate pieces, the straight edges of the lead strips 
cohere firmly at the line of contact. It is explained, some- 
what vaguely, that the pipes are made absolutely true, and 
that the particles of lead are brought to so close contact 
that they cohere under the same law which holds together 
the particles of any ordinary mass of cold metal. What- 
ever the cause, it is certain that the semicircular strips 
finally emerge in one solid round bar of gleaming lead. 



38 B Y- WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

The keenest eye cannot detect the central line where the 
strips were united, and the lead itself, under the hard 
pressure, is made more heavy and compact. Then an in- 
tricate machine, almost human in intelligence, seizes one 
end of the long coil, cuts it to small sections, and, quick 
as lightning, punches each piece into the shape of a bullet, 
round or conical, as may be needed. The bullets are in- 
spected, counted, and packed away by the million for 
future wars. 

But the manufacture of the great guns for naval war- 
fare forms the really impressive feature of Woolwich 
Arsenal. Insular England, dependent on her navy, has, 
for the last twenty years, almost concentrated the mechani- 
cal talent of her Woolwich factories on this branch of her 
armament. How to make guns which shall perforate the 
iron-clads of other nations, how to make iron walls which 
the guns of other nations cannot perforate, is the twofold 
problem which constantly spurs her forward. A single 
sight inside the Woolwich Arsenal grounds shows how 
steadily the fight goes on between the iron-clad and the 
projectile. One sees hundreds of great guns in line side 
by side, made a few years ago, which have never been 
fired since they were tested, and are as new and fresh as 
when first turned out from the factory. Yet all these guns 
are to be broken up and recast into improved ordnance. 
Within a few years — almost months — they have become 
obsolete, and all the vast labor and expense they repre- 
sent goes for nothing save the experience gained. To the 



ENGLAND'S GUN FOUNDRY. 39 

cost as well as the progress of wars these long lines of 
cannon, condemned without trial, bear mute but impres- 
sive testimony. For the most part they are recast into 
the heavier guns, weighing from forty to one hundred 
tons, which equip the modern Devastations and Inflexibles 
of England's navy. 

Two thirds of all the structures of the Woolwich Arse- 
nal appear to be given up to the manufacture of these 
colossal cannon. At the first stage of their construction 
there is made a long core of cast steel. Then strips of 
wrought steel as long and large as the beams of a house 
are wrapped around the breech end. The strips are laid 
on hot, one after another, in coils, and, contracting as they 
cool, form a breech of prodigious strength. Next the gun 
is placed on a lathe, turned smooth, the centre bored out 
and the inside polished until one can see his face reflected 
from its curves. The rifling is an operation needing pecul- 
iar delicacy and skill. It is done with a long stiff rod, 
upon the end of which is fixed a cutting tool of the hard- 
est steel, grooving as it must the steel core of the gun. 
So slowly does the massive cylinder revolve that, even at 
the breech where it has largest diameter, it scarcely seems 
to move at all. The rifling rod as well as the rate of revo- 
lution is regulated by a beautiful piece of mechanism, 
covered with numbered arcs and figures, and described as 
a marvel of mathematical skill applied to a mechanical 
process. When the huge hundred-ton creature is done, it 
is a wonder indeed. Its weight is twice that of a large 



40 B V. WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

railroad locomotive ; it is forty feet long from breech to 
muzzle, and laid across Broadway it would reach just 
about from curb to curb ; it is seven feet in diameter at 
the breech and two feet eight inches from inner bore to 
outer surface. With an efficient range of several miles, it 
carries a conical shot, twenty inches through, weighing 
almost a ton, and needing several hundred pounds of 
powder to project it. A shot of this size now penetrates 
the thickest naval armor plating, and cuts through twenty 
inches of solid iron backed with oak as cleanly as a bullet 
through cheese. It has, after much experiment, been 
found that the most effective rifling for these cannon is a 
groove starting as a straight line at the breech. Half way 
to the muzzle the groove begins to turn, and at the muzzle 
the curve is greatest, sending the ball out with a kind of 
circular " snap," which — so say the engineers — gives the 
greatest range and precision to the projectile. 

The massive machinery, which handles these big pieces 
of ordnance as readily as a child's toy, excites scarcely 
more wonder by its strength than by its unerring accuracy. 
It includes a horizontal revolving bed, used for cutting the 
bed-plates for the guns, and probably not less than forty 
feet square ; a crane which lifts easily two hundred tons, 
and can readily swing in air six American locomotives ; 
and the famous trip-hammer, weighing forty tons, and said 
to be the largest in the world, yet which can be so gently 
adjusted as to force a watch-crystal into its place without 
breaking it. How excellent are both the material and 



ENGLAND'S GUN FOUNDRY. 4I 

workmanship turned out by these splendid machines at 
Woolwich is proved by accident as well as by design. 
In a small building is shown an eighty-ton gun which was 
tested intentionally until it burst. By its side lies the big 
gun of the " Thunderer," iron-clad, which was burst by ac- 
cidental double loading a few years ago, with the deadly 
result which many readers will recall. In both these 
great pieces the fractures are almost perfectly symmet- 
rical, forming cubes forward of the breech, and proving 
alike how flawless was the material and how evenly 
distributed was the strength of the gun. 

In the centre of the works rises a chimney some two 
hundred feet high, the tallest in the arsenal grounds, and 
said to be one of the loftiest in England. When this or 
any of the other chimneys are to be mended, the ser- 
vices of a bold chimney climber connected with the works 
are called for. With a kite he throws a string over the 
top, then pulls down the kite with a second cord after the 
first is properly adjusted. The string draws up a stronger 
string, then a rope, then a corded ladder by which the 
chimney is climbed. A few years since the man had thus 
scaled the top of the tallest chimney, built a wooden 
scaffolding for repairing it, and then come down for 
dinner, when the woodwork took fire from a flying spark ; 
and it is related, as a specimen of the fellow's hardened 
recklessness, that after the fire burned out he ascended 
once again on the blackened and half-burned rope-ladder, 
not even waiting to have it tested. A long list of similar 



42 BY.fVAYS OF NATURE AND LIFK 

incidents fill out the annals of Woolwich, to which could 
be added details of institutions at the arsenal which the 
limitations of this chapter must exclude — the torpedo 
factory, where secrets are so carefully guarded that not 
even a British general can get admitted, and the workmen 
are chosen specially for their high character and secretive- 
ness ; the great turf-covered magazines, where men, for 
fear of explosion, must wear list shoes and discard every 
thing metallic from their clothing ; and the vast system of 
blast furnaces, placed underground, where the workmen 
who draw out the molten metal above must wear thick, 
wooden-soled shoes to protect their feet from the 
heated iron floor. Yet, when all the martial wonders 
of Woolwich, with their triumphs of gigantic mechanism, 
have been seen, the visitor leaves it with the feeling that, 
after all, the humblest factory in England stands for a 
larger idea in human progress than the great gun-shop, 
where science brings her supreme gifts only to aid man to 
kill his fellow. 



LONDON IN A FOG. 

THE visitor who sojourned in London during the 
months of February and March of 1882 had rare 
occasions to study that phenomenon so curious to the 
American eye, a London fog. The oldest residents of the 
city agreed that the winter then closing had been attended 
by the most dense and depressing mists that had 
ever visited the British metropolis. The affliction, more- 
over, had been deepened by two features of dismal 
portent ; for several of the fogs had been attended by 
frightful railroad accidents, and the frequency and persist- 
ency of the mists during the whole winter went far to con- 
firm the prevalent belief that they grow worse in London 
year by year. Slowly but steadily these noxious fogs of 
the great city are reaching the bad eminence of an epidemic 
disease ; and though some optimists aver that their 
smoky vapors purify the slums, the theory stands for little 
against a recorded increase of the local death rate during 
fog time from twenty-two to more than thirty-five for 
each thousand of population. Londoners with weak 
throats and lungs nowadays, with all their local preju- 
dice, concede the fatal quality of their mists ; they mi- 
grate by thousands every winter to the gentler climes 
of Pau, Nice, or Italy ; and business men afflicted merely 
43 



44 BV-IVAYS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

with hard colds break a^vay, when they can, from the 
thrall of trade, to Paris, or the sunnier regions of rural 
England. How these terrible fogs shall be avoided, how 
mitigated, how endured, are questions as staple in London 
common talk as the doings of Parliament, the Irish 
Question, or the newest sensation in society or at the 
theatres. 

The London fog has been given many a picturesque 
place in modern British literature ; but not even the 
graphic prose of Dickens has paid it more vivid tribute 
than the swift verses of Henry Luttrel : 

" First at the dawn of lingering day, 
It rises with an ashen gray ; 
Then deepening with a sordid stain 
Of yellow, like a lion's mane, 
Vapor importunate and dense. 
It wars at once with every sense. 
The ears escape not ; all around 
Returns a dull, unwonted sound. 
Loath to stand still, afraid to stir. 
The chilled and puzzled passenger. 
Oft blundering from the pavement, faik 
To feel his way along the rails ; 
Or, at the crossings, in the roll 
Of every carriage dreads the pole. 
Scarce an eclipse with pall so dun 
Blots from the face of heaven the sun. 
But soon a thicker, darker cloak 
Wrapping the town, behold, in smoke. 
Which steam-compelling trade disgorges 
From all her furnaces and forges 
In pitchy clouds too dense to rise. 
Descends rejected from the skies ; 
Till struggling day, extinguished quite, 
At noon gives place to candle-light. 



LONDON IN A FOG. 45- 

Oh, Chemistry, attractive maid. 
Descend in pity to our aid ; 
Come with thy all-pervading gases. 
Thy crucibles, retorts, and glasses. 
Thy fearful energies and wonders. 
Thy dazzling lights and mimic thunders : 
Let Carbon in thy train be seen. 
Dark Azote and fair Oxygen, 
And Wollaston and Davy guide 
The car that bears them at thy side ; 
If any power can, anyhow. 
Abate these nuisances 't is thou ; 
And see, to aid thee in the blow. 
The bill of Michael Angelo. 
Oh ! join (success a thing of course is) 
Thy heavenly to his mortal forces ; 
Make all the chimneys chew the cud. 
Like hungry cows, as chimneys should. 
And, since 't is only smoke we draw 
Within our lungs at common law. 
Into their thirsty tubes be sent 
Fresh air, by Act of Parliament." 

Science has at last come to certain fixed conclusions as 
to the nature and origin of these Cimmerian mists. As is 
well known, bituminous coal is burned almost universally 
in London grates. More than a million chimneys pour 
from their sooty throats the unconsumed elements which 
we call smoke. It hangs around the house-tops, lurks 
through the streets, begrimes the out-door and in-door 
work of immortal artist or architect, and makes the clear- 
est of London days only a shade brighter than our In- 
dian summers at home. He is a fortunate sight-seer who 
from the top of St. Paul's has ever, even on a sunny day 
of June, scanned a horizon more than a mile away. This 



46 B y. WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

all-pervading smoke rather than the watery atom is, as 
science avers, the source of the terrible London fogs. The 
mist left to itself would dissipate in the sun or be forced 
away by the winds. But the smoke charged with an oily 
ingredient derived from the bitumen of the coal has 
a peculiar affinity for the moisture. It surrounds each 
tiny spheroid of water with a film of oil, and, as we 
may say, greases the skin of the mist, making it proof 
against the ordinary action of the air, wind, or sun. The 
result is a strange compound of soot, oil, and mist 
combined in minute particles, hanging heavily in the 
atmosphere, and while it lasts making the life of the 
Londoner a burden and a sorrow. Incidental causes add 
to the intensity of the phenomenon. Sometimes a 
change of wind drives back the slow-drifting fog in an 
accumulated mass. Reaching the narrow and sinuous 
streets of the city it sinks by its own weight and gorges 
the thoroughfares, spite of the breezes which, in places 
more open, would bear it away. 

To study by night a London fog in its deepest pitch 
one must during its prevalence visit the neighborhood of 
the parks of the city where large bodies of water add 
their exhalation to the ordinary mist. Half a mile from 
Regent's or Hyde Park it may be that the fog is com- 
paratively thin. The eye can perhaps penetrate it for 
fifty feet, and one can descry moving objects and avoid 
them. But the moment one steps into the denser fog 
area the ghastly change begins. The foot-passenger first 



LONDON IN A FOG. 47 

notices that, as he moves on, objects seem to fade without 
new ones coming into view. Then the city lamps, though 
perhaps only a hundred feet apart, die out one by one. 
There is no real black darkness, but, if I may use 
the paradox, a darkness of impenetrable light, a darkness 
made visible. One seems to be immersed in a luminous 
cloud so solid that it can be handled, cut, and shaped. 
The fog seems also to deaden all sounds. A human figure 
—man, woman, orboy— suddenly materializes on the pave- 
ment a few feet away. It glides by noiselessly like a 
phantom, and is gone. You feel like a human apparition 
among fellow-ghosts. Every thing puts on the same un- 
earthly aspect. The gas-jets become little spurts of blue 
flame hanging in the air and barely perceptible thirty feet 
away. The solid pavement is felt below the feet, but 
is unseen. The hand held close to the face is descried, 
but, moved to arm's length, the digits become spectral, 
then dissolve. The stillness of the streets, the general 
hush of sounds of traffic, and a peculiar sense of isolation 
and helplessness keep up the illusion that one has for the 
moment passed from the world of mortals into a region of 
disembodied spirits. 

Apart from its supernatural aspect a dense London iog 
brings out some queer phases of human life. The street 
boys hold high revel during the mists. Buying for 
small sums long pieces of hemp, stiffened with tar, they 
light the ends, and a party of them earn a good stock of 
sixpences by escorting lost wayfarers home. At the sta- 



48 BY-WAYS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

tions of the underground railroads, and at centres of 
cab traffic, gather dense crowds unable to get their bear- 
ings and utterly helpless without aid. The cabmen, who 
in ordinary times know all the ins and outs of London 
streets, are as helpless as the rest. If they take passen- 
gers at all, it is for short trips and big prices, and even 
then they venture only at a walk, leading their horses by 
the bridles. On the occasion of one of these fogs I re- 
member almost tumbling over a prostrate horse which 
had fallen across the foot-pavement on which his careless 
master had led him. As a rule, passengers caught in the 
deeper mists leave cabs and omnibuses, preferring foot 
travel as equally fast and as a safer style of locomotion. 
The absolute helplessness of almost everybody, the blind 
leading the blind, the lost seeking their bearings from 
the lost, and the universal confusion and chaos fill in the 
details of a curious picture out-of-doors. In-doors there 
are scenes well-nigh as grotesque. The smoky mist 
has a singular penetrating quality, and only needs a key- 
hole to get in. At the hazy theatres the actors all coun- 
terfeit in appearance the ghost in Hamlet ; at large 
in-door places, like the reading-room of the British 
Museum, half the interior is entirely obscured, and, even 
in the smaller rooms of dwellings, objects appear dim and 
phantom-like. The fog is usually accompanied by a chill 
in the air that cuts to the marrow, and the smoke 
breathed in by sleepers is thrown off from the lungs in 
the morning as a black secretion of phlegm. Another 



LONDON IN A FOG. 49 

quality of the London smoke-fog is disclosed by the 
singular fact that the electric light makes less impression 
on it than a gas-flame of the same candle-power. 

During a London fog some months ago, which several 
residents said was the densest they had ever known, the 
writer was at some pains to test the thickness of the mist 
on Baker Street, a thoroughfare, from curb to curb, about 
as wide as Broadway, and opening on Regent's Park. 
From the middle of the roadway the bright lights of 
the shop windows were quite imperceptible. Standing 
under a gas-lamp one could barely see a foot passenger 
fifteen feet away or a passing cab in the middle of 
the street. At ten feet distant the gas-jet became com- 
pletely isolated from its surroundings. The lamp with 
the supporting iron post disappeared, and the flame, 
changed to a sulphurous blue tongue of vapor, was pro- 
jected in the air and hung in space. Once outside the 
light of the street lamps the range of vision became much 
more circumscribed. Large vehicles passed ten feet 
away unseen and scarcely heard. Passers-by could be 
discerned at a distance of perhaps six feet, and then only 
the upper parts of their bodies could be made out, 
the legs and feet being hidden by a still denser stratum 
of fog which seemed to wrap the pavement. All 
distinction of color was gone, and even opposite a street 
lamp dark buildings, as well as those of light hue, 
took on the universal dull tint of the smoky mist. 

This is the London fog in the night-time. By day 



50 B V- WA YS OF NA TURK AND LIFE. 

it presents phenomena less weird, but more varied 
and curious. Sometimes, indeed very often, it becomes 
what is known locally as the "yellow fog." Dame 
Nature, for the time being, seems to have an acute attack 
of jaundice. The atmosphere, owing to some occult 
combination of sunlight and mist, changes to deep 
yellow. The tawny and depressing color suffuses all 
objects, just as if a thick yellow glass had been thrown 
across the face of the sun to produce on this earthly stage 
the solemn effects of certain tints on the boards of a 
theatre. Anon, perhaps, this yellow changes to a soft 
pink as the stratum of fog grows thin. The sun now 
reappears in the likeness of a stage moon, and its disk is 
as clearly defined as though seen through smoked glass. 
This pink fog throws out a peculiarly pleasing color, not 
unlike the glow of sunset, making the dull streets long 
vistas of rosy haze. The " high fog " of London is 
even more remarkable. The mist forms a thick, dark 
stratum with its lower surface — so say the men of science 
— about one hundred and fifty feet above the streets. 
Below the air is free from mist, but a darkness like that 
of dusk prevails. At noon during one of these high 
fogs, when standing in the open air, it is just possible 
to read the clear type of the London " Times." Sometimes, 
on the contrary, the mist hangs low in a dense but thin 
stratum. From the top of a high building, or from the 
elevated parts of London, the sun is seen undimmed 
in the clear blue sky. But the lower parts of the city 



LONDON IN A FOG. 5 1 

are plunged in a dense sea of fog whence the chimney- 
pots, steeples, and rough tops of buildings project like 
wrecks from an ocean. Now and then a moving fog of 
this kind can be seen sweeping like a river six feet deep 
down the streets adjacent to the parks, while all above is 
blue ether and bright sunshine. The inconveniences of 
the worst fogs by night are repeated by day. Traffic is 
often stopped, the street and shop lights blaze at noon- 
tide, and out-door life is tedious and dismal to the last 
degree. Thieves and pickpockets have a rare chance to 
get in their work at these times, and a few months ago, 
during one of the fogs, a bold rascal smashed a jewel- 
ler's show window with a stone and escaped easily with 
rich booty. 

With the increased and increasing prevalence of the 
mists have come, of course, plenty of schemes for doing 
away with the noxious smoke which is conceded to be 
the chief cause of the evil. Prescriptions for building 
fires without vapor are as common in London as pan- 
aceas for sea-sickness. But Smoke Abatement Exhibi- 
tions, the skill of inventors, and the suggestions of 
science have all thus far ended where they have begun — 
in fog; and misty winters of disease and discontent 
remain as a dismal certainty of the future. Looking for- 
ward to the distant period when London's population, 
chimneys, and smoke-fogs shall be multiplied, the pro- 
phetic eye may see a germ of reality in the well-worn 
figure of Macaulay's barbarian looking down on a 
desolated city. 



WATERLOO TO-DAY. 

ABOUT twelve miles south of Brussels the traveller 
from London to the Rhine passes by rail through 
the little Belgian village of Braine V Alleud. It is a mere 
clump of lowly but neat dwellings, whence each morning 
come forth troops of wooden-shoed Belgian women to till 
the adjacent fields. On three sides of the village, north, 
south, and west, are gently rolling fields which stretch 
away far as one can see with the eye. But on the east 
the graceful curves of land rise to bolder proportions, and 
three miles distant they swell into two ridges with a long 
sweeping dip between. From crest to crest the ridges are, 
perhaps, three quarters of a mile apart, with a direction 
nearly north and south, and a length of three or four 
miles. But the westerly ridge at the southern end makes 
a sudden turn and bends backward in a blunt angle toward 
the village of Braine 1* Alleud. Upon these twin 
ridges and the intermediate space was fought the battle 
of Waterloo : the angular ridge marked the British posi- 
tion ; the straighter ridge was Napoleon's line of battle ; 
and at the apex of the angle, just within the converging 
British lines, is the farm-house of Hougomont. 

A homely outline may sometimes give a clearer idea of 
a battle than the most elaborate map with prolix and 
52 



WATERLOO TO-DAY. 53 

confusing 'explanations. In the appended diagram the 
reader can see the battle of Waterloo reduced to its 
simplest terms. The lines of battle of the rival armies, 
as depicted, corresponded closely with the two ridges ; 
and between the lines lay the long, gently curving hollow, 
across which the columns of Napoleon so persistently 
and so vainly marched to the attack. 

\ EwGLisa LitJj: OT Battle 






French Linx ot Battle 

This is no place or time to rehearse the details of a 
fight over which the military critics have battled almost 
as fiercely as did the combatants themselves on that fatal 
Sunday in June, sixty-eight years ago. But I may ven- 
ture to say that two prominent features of the battle must 
impress even the most cursory visitor to the field. The 
first is the general simplicity of the plan of the contest, 
which, without tedious narrative, may be described as the 
attempt of an army posted on one long ridge to oust their 
adversaries posted on another. The second and more sig- 
nificant point is the immense strategic value of Hougo- 
mont in the fight. The bunch of buildings bearing that 
name are in some accounts of the battle called a chateau, 



54 BY-IVAYS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

in others a farm-house. They are in reality neither, but 
something between the two. They consist of a solid, 
plain structure of brick and stone, shaped like an elongated 
New England barn ; a smaller but similar building set at 
right angles to the longer one ; a little brick chapel placed 
in a triangular court, and once used for devotions by the 
owners; and a connected orchard, planted thickly with 
pear- and cherry-trees. The structures, with their 
court-yard and orchard, cover perhaps the area of 
one of our down-town city blocks in New York. The 
strategic strength of the position is largely due to the 
solid outer walls of the buildings, the massive gates lead- 
ing to the court, and most of all to the brick wall, a foot 
thick and six feet high, which, starting from the outer 
corner of the smaller building, runs around the orchard on 
two sides. On the day of the great battle the open rear 
of the orchard was covered by the British cannon posted 
on the rising ground farther back; the buildings were 
pierced thickly with loop-holes and filled with British 
veterans from the Spanish Peninsula, hardy warriors, 
whose backs the best of Napoleon's marshals never saw ; 
and a line of British soldiers rested on a long platform set 
half way up the orchard wall, and fired over it at the 
enemy, while another line, lying beneath, shot through 
loop-holes. Hougomont thus was changed in one night 
from a peaceful dwelling into a fortress, all the more power- 
ful because the most far-seeing foe could not forecast its 
strength. A thick wood, now cut away, stood between it 



WATERLOO TO-DAY. 55 

and Napoleon's cannon ; and, indeed, the inferior artillery 
of those days could, in better position, hardly have made 
any quick impression on its walls. It projected like the 
prow of an iron clad from the point of the British angle, 
and for hours the surges of battle beat against it in vain. 
In later years Wellington called Hougomont the key of 
the fight, and it seems strange that the historic victory 
should have received its name from a little village, miles 
away from the field, where the Iron Duke sent off his first 
despatches, rather than from the stronghold that saved 
the day. 

The Hougomont of the present time has relapsed into 
one of the dullest of Belgian farm-houses. A few staid 
fowls pick a scant living in the court-yard, three or four 
gaunt cows are stabled in the smaller of the structures, 
and a squalid dairy-woman talks in broken English to the 
visitor, or proffers him for five cents a glass of fresh milk. 
But the buildings and walls, though mouldy and weather- 
beaten with time, are still well preserved. The outer 
walls, pock-marked with French bullets, the British loop- 
holes in the brickwork around the orchard, and the 
chapel with its interior burned out by the French shells, 
remain just as they were. There is shown, too, an old 
well which, tradition says, was filled up with dead bodies 
after the fight, and in the blackened chapel devout visitors 
are moved to awe by a large wooden crucifix whose 
scorched feet the flames just touched and then died away. 
The famous orchard, though filled with the buried dead 



$6 BY- WAYS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

below, bears no outward trace of the conflict, unless it is 
the grave of a British soldier of rank, who, dying in Eng- 
land, was at his own wish brought back to be laid under 
the soil on which he and his comrades had fought so 
bravely. 

Following northward the rectangular ridge on which 
the British were posted, and travelling along its longer 
arm away from Hougomont, one sees in succession the 
places on which were enacted the most dramatic scenes 
of the battle. First comes a little embankment, so low 
that the guide must point it out before it is noticed. It 
is perhaps three hundred feet long and a foot and a half 
high, evidently the remains of the ridge of dirt thrown out 
from some old sunken road. Just before this ridge, and 
almost in the centre of the British line, the fortunes of 
the day were decided. Across the dip of land in front, 
and up the rising slope. Napoleon, descrying the approach- 
ing Prussians, sent his Imperial Guard. The little embank- 
ment was low, but it sufficed to hide the rows of the 
British Guards lying behind in the wheat, whose sudden 
rise, fatal volley, and quick charge closed the fight. A 
few steps in front and one comes to the spot where the 
Old Guard was annihilated, and where Cambronne, accord- 
ing to the popular legend, bequeathed to posterity his 
immortal phrase, " The Guard dies, but never surrenders." 
The upper end of this humble embankment marks also the 
spot where Wellington viewed his final stroke of victory, 
and closed a military career that was unbroken by defeat. 



WATERLOO TO-DAY, 57 

Still farther up the ridge, and precisely in the centre of 
the British position, stands the most ambitious token of 
the battle. It is a conical mound, turfed over, and rising 
perhaps a hundred and fifty feet from the crest of the 
ridge below. Hundreds of Belgian workmen were em- 
ployed for months in raising it, at a cost of almost two 
hundred thousand dollars. On its summit is reared a 
stone pedestal, surmounted by a colossal bronze lion, 
which, fronting the east defiantly, seems to symbolize 
the courage with which the British lion faced the foe on 
the opposite ridge. The lower part of the stone base, shat- 
tered and black, records the attempt which some Gallic 
vandals made, a few years ago, to blow up the memorial 
with gunpowder. Wellington persistently opposed the 
rearing of the mound, because the removal of the earth 
used for it partly changed the crest of the ridge and ob- 
scured some of the landmarks of the fray. But from the 
tourist's point of view the mound is an immense advan- 
tage. From its top every point in the long battle-field is 
clearly outlined. The height shortens the distance to 
Hougomont, and brings it and the other places of interest 
almost to one's feet. The long twin ridges, and the slope 
between, change as by magic into a level checker-board 
of grain fields, on which women and men toil in the sun. 
As is the case with land all over Belgium, the area of 
Waterloo is cultivated almost to the last square inch. 
In the budding spring season, the young wheat, rye, and 
barley are green, but a little later in the year they are 



$8 B y. WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

mottled by red patches of poppy — a fresh suggestion of 
the battle. Sentiment, standing on this height and feed- 
ing on heroic thoughts, finds her wings sadly clipped by 
the reflection that these Waterloo acres are worth eight 
hundred dollars each, and will lease, every one of them, 
for thirty dollars a year. 

Stretching northward from the monument, the ridge 
sinks almost to a plateau, while the dip in front, between 
the positions of the two armies, rises. It was on this 
plateau that the brunt of the battle was borne by the 
squares of British infantry. The heavy cavalry of Napo- 
leon swept, time and again, across the plain, passing 
between the human craters belching their volleys of mus- 
ketry. The remnant of sunken road a little behind the 
level area is pointed out as the place where some hun- 
dreds of French cuirassiers, charging beyond the squares, 
were precipitated, and lost their lives. So far as the bat- 
tle-field shows, this is the only germ for that colossal fic- 
tion of Victor Hugo — the story of the loss of a large 
part of the French army in a chasm. Just in front of the 
plateau, and half way between the two ridges, is the farm- 
house of La Haye Saints. During the fight it was bat- 
tled for fiercely, and, standing midway between the main 
lines of the two armies, it was taken and retaken many 
times. Now it is a pacific little structure of brick, partly 
walled in, and a model of rustic neatness. It faces a road 
running east and west, which divided the left centre from 
the left wing of the British forces. On the north side of 



WATERLOO TO-DAY. 59 

the road, and along the British left wing, the fighting was 
bloody, desperate, and undecisive. But the only spots of 
present interest are a long slope where Ponsonby's cavalry 
made their famous charge against the French cannon; 
and a slightly depressed basin, in which some of Napo- 
leon's heavy guns stuck fast in the mud and were disabled. 
The farm-house of La Belle Alliance, farther along the 
road to the eastward, where Napoleon fixed his head- 
quarters, where Blucher and Wellington met, and where 
Napoleon's travelling carriage was captured ; the distant 
monument toward the northeast marking the field where 
the vanguard of the Prussian army was first engaged ; the 
memorial to the dead of the German legion, — all these, 
though deserving of the traveller's visit, merit no detail 
here. 

Military critics, including Wellington himself, have de- 
scribed Waterloo as an unscientific battle, and a poor one 
to illustrate the art of war by. The fight is authorita- 
tively called an attempt of Napoleon to crush the British 
by main force before Blucher came up, and to do it on a 
field where deep mud and the simple contour of the two 
parallel ridges opposed either quick or complex strategy. 
All this may be true, yet the famous field will always be 
visited, and always deserve to be. The genius of the two 
rival commanders who first met there, the fateful result 
of the contest to Europe, and, above all, the dramatic and 
familiar incidents of the fight, will never cease to attract 
the tourist. In visiting the field he should, if possible, 



60 B y- WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

traverse it on foot; he should secure a good English- 
speaking guide, under an iron-clad bargain ; and before 
taking a step on the field he should put to rout the " Old 
Guard " of dirty youngsters who otherwise will dog him 
all day to sell their "relics " from the Belgian junk-shops. 
It is one of the most humorous sights of Waterloo to see 
an Englishman trying to pump up heroic memories in the 
midst of one of these swarms of human gnats plying him 
with spurious bullets and old bones. But at Waterloo, as 
at every other historic spot in Europe, the meanest swin- 
dies of the present jostle the great deeds of the past. 



THE GIANT TIDES OF FUNDY. 

EVERY school-boy has read in his geography a few 
words about those tides of marvellous sweep and 
rise which have made the Bay of Fundy world-famous. 
The body of water where these tides occur is of a singu- 
larly curious and fantastic shape. It will be pretty nearly 
represented by the back of the human hand if the thumb 
and all but the middle and forefingers be folded, and the 
two latter extended in the shape of a prong. The back 
of the hand proper will then depict roughly the main body 
of water in the bay, while the two fingers will show the 
two upper bays or estuaries where the tide rises highest. 
If the bottom of one of the fingers were to be tightly con- 
stricted by a cord, we should have a crude counterpart of 
the narrow entrance of one of the upper bays and a still 
closer general likeness. From the broad sea-mouth of the 
Bay of Fundy to each of its two heads is about one 
hundred and fifty miles ; at its broadest point it is some 
fifty miles wide ; and the whole body of water has a little 
more than twice the area of Long Island Sound. 

Without affecting scientific exactness we may briefly 
speak of the familiar tidal rise and fall which we see on 
the sea-shore as due to the attractive force or gravity ex- 
erted on the fluent water by the moon and the sun— the 
6i 



62 B y- WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

fonner, owing to its nearness to the earth, exerting about 
twice the tidal energy of the greater luminary. But the 
height of the tides at various times differs, from a number 
of causes, such as the relative positions of the sun and 
moon, the union or division of their attractive powers, the 
shapes of the bodies of water attracted, and so on. Some 
strange phenomena are produced by these variations. A 
tidal wave, which in deep water may travel one thousand 
miles an hour, may have its velocity reduced by shallows 
to fifteen or twenty miles, and its direction reversed. So, 
too, just as superimposed waves of sound are made in the 
experiments of Professor Tyndall either to strengthen the 
sound or to destroy it entirely, two tidal waves may make 
higher tides or neutralize each other, preventing any tide at 
all, as happens at certain places on the Pacific coast. For 
like reasons, in some regions there is but one tide a day, in 
others four, while headlands, bays, and sounds modify the 
rise so decidedly that the immense upheavals of water in 
the Bay of Fundy are attended with a rise of only eighteen 
feet at its mouth. 

By way of more direct illustration of the cause of 
the Fundy tides, let us suppose a boat to be rocked 
gently at the mouth of a shallow ditch, wide at its 
outlet, but converging somewhat sharply to a point. The 
little wave, at first perhaps almost imperceptible, will 
quickly increase in height until it rushes in a narrowing 
but higher breaker to the ditch's end. This essentially 
explains the huge tidal waves of the Bay of Fundy. The 



THE GIANT TIDES OF FUNDY, 63 

estuary is simply an extensive ditch in which a prodigious 
volume of water rushing from the Atlantic pours along 
the converging shores, steadily swelling upward. One or 
two other remoter influences may, however, affect the 
tides of the bay. A straight line drawn from Cape Sable 
on the eastern side of the bay to the hook of Cape Cod 
cuts off a great ocean bay some two hundred and fifty 
miles long coastwise and one hundred deep, with the 
Bay of Fundy at its upper extremity. The regular 
tidal current of the Atlantic is deflected northward from 
Cape Cod, so that the Bay of Fundy, with its two con- 
verging prongs, acts as a kind of tidal funnel to a much 
larger funnel, and the immense mass of Atlantic water 
must heap up until its equilibrium is reached. The two 
remoter funnels, or prongs, as we have described them, 
called the Bay of Chignecto and the Basin of Minas, of 
course receive relatively an even larger proportion of the 
flood. They are the last of a triple series of sea-funnels, 
at whose upper ends the steadily converging tidal waves 
attain their greatest height. The crude diagram on the 
next page may serve to show the exceptional configura- 
tion of coast-line that produces these wonderful tidal con- 
vergences. 

At Windsor, on the River Avon, and a dozen miles 
from its mouth, is one of the most eligible places to ob- 
serve the grander phenomena of the Fundy tides. The 
Avon at that point is a wide estuary varying from a 
quarter of a mile to a mile in width, fronted on one side 



64 B V. WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

by the dikes of the farmers, on the other by the Windsor 
wharves. Stand on one of the piers and see the flood 
at its highest. It is a bay of wide expanse, and deep 




enough to float an ocean steam-ship. A strong wind beats 
the surface almost into ocean breakers, and the dark-red 
waters dash angrily over the piers and against the oppos- 
ing dikes. Two long bridges span the ruddy stream, which 
swells roughly to the planks and seems as though it would 
dash the structure away. Through smaller streams the 
flood penetrates far inland, and looking northward the 
whole country seems afloat, as during a Western freshet. 
The water opposite Windsor at full of the moon, when its 
attraction unites with that of the sun, rises some thirty- 
five feet from the river bottom. 

This, then, is the spectacle at high-water. Go now and 
see the estuary when the tide is out. The river is no longer 
a river at all. A great chasm, half a mile wide, and so 
long that its extremities are invisible, yawns at one's feet. 
In the centre is a little rivulet a few feet broad, which a 



THE GIANT TIDES OF FUNDY, 65 

child could wade. At the edge of the gulf is a precipice 
of red mud. Then comes a steep slope; then another 
precipice, slanting finally to the stony bottom of the 
channel. The vast gulch appears as though suddenly 
opened by an earthquake, and its rents and reaches of 
dark-red soil give a secondary semblance to a half-cooled 
Inferno. There is, too, a droll and incongruous side to 
the spectacle. Every thing of human build is so absurdly 
disproportionate to the meagre streamlet that it seems as 
though man had lost his reason and was making ludicrously 
toilsome preparation against a remote and impalpable foe. 
The two long bridges are spiders on stilts, with no water 
below. The dikes, reared with so much labor, are far in- 
land, and have no wave ,to resist. Ships at the wharves 
rest on the edge of a muddy cliff, and are seemingly as 
remote from navigation as the Ark on Ararat. 

Presently, as the tide turns and the rise of the water 
begins, there comes a magical change. The sluggish drift 
of the small rivulet is stilled. A moment later its current 
turns backward from the sea, swelling in a few minutes to 
a creek twenty yards wide. Turn away and look again 
after a quarter of an hour. The creek has grown to a 
navigable river — restless, turbulent, foam-streaked, and 
half as broad as the East River at Fulton Ferry. Now 
for the next hour is the time to watch the rise of the 
waters in all their strength and fury. The current, gain- 
ing velocity every instant, rises into huge undulating 
waves. Surges of water, half an acre in extent at places, 



66 B y. WA YS OF NA TURK AND LIFE. 

swell from below and seem to impose themselves on each 
other. At the boiling edges of the stream is a stone or 
log; a moment later and it is gone from view. The 
waters burst through the piers of the bridges as if at the 
mouth of a flume, and streaks of foam, hundreds of yards 
long, trending down-stream, mark where the currents 
have intersected. The whole effect is that of a compound 
of Niagara rapids with a Maelstrom, only here is dark 
blood in place of water. Once, on a sandy slope of the 
Avon, I tested the rate of rise. On an incline of sand 
which might be called steep I placed a mark two feet 
from the edge of the flood. The water reached it in 
forty seconds by the watch. Up a slope of two-hundred- 
feet face these gigantic tides of the Bay of Fundy will 
climb at the average rate of more than a foot a minute, 
and sometimes much more rapidly. A curious phenome- 
non attends this in-coming tide at Windsor. During the 
second hour of its flood it seemingly rises far higher and 
faster than during all the rest of the period of its upward 
flow, intensifying vastly the grandeur and impressiveness 
of the spectacle. 

One of the most interesting effects of the first approach 
of the tide to its lower level appears when it reaches the 
crest of a long sand-bank with a large basin behind it. 
The waters creep up steadily until a little rill begins to 
pour over in a miniature rapid. Almost before one can 
say it the rill has grown to a rapid brook, and in a few 
moments more to a swift dashing river, spreading rapidly 



THE GIANT TIDES OF FUNDY. 6/ 

at its lower end until the wide basin is covered. Erelong, 
too, the whole sand-spit is under water, only signalling its 
presence by breakers on the surface of the now deepening 
flood. On some of these more level spaces, but still with 
a perceptible slope, I have seen the waters climb twenty- 
five feet in sixty seconds. 

By far the most sublime of the tidal spectacles of 
Fundy is the sudden rise of the waters in a bore or tidal 
breaker. At Monckton, New Brunswick, twenty-five 
miles from the Bay of Chignecto, and on a river with 
name as big as its tides, the writer had once an oppor- 
tunity to see the bore by bright moonlight. On the 
wharves, at half-past nine in the evening, had gathered a 
large crowd, drawn thither partly by the coming bore, 
partly by the seductive rays of the full moon. The tide 
in the river — at Monckton a stream about a quarter of a 
mile wide — was still running out sluggishly, more than 
thirty feet below the level of the wharf. All at once far 
down-stream came a distant rumbling like the sound of a 
railroad train. A few minutes, and a dark line crossed the 
river in the distance. The line gradually materialized in 
the moonlight until it became a foamy wall three feet 
high, swept up the naked flats, and, in a wild reach of 
white billows preceded by a breaker, passed us up-stream. 
The waters behind the advancing crest rose six feet 
instantly, and where before had been a lazy downward 
current was a raging sweep of muddy water rushing up- 
stream. At many places, particularly on the flats below 



68 B Y. WA YS OF NA TURK AND LIFE. 

Truro, Nova Scotia, on the Basin of Minas, the bore is 
much grander than at Monckton. Sometimes it is eight 
feet high, and travels fifteen miles an hour. Large fish — 
cod, shad, and even the strong salmon — are occasionally 
dashed up by it lifeless on the shores. It has been known 
to drown cattle, to wreck a large, laden schooner, and to 
toss a craft as heavy as a pilot boat high on the banks, 
upside down. Hogs rooting for food on the sand-slopes 
have an instinctive inkling of its far-distant coming, and 
run grunting to high land. Not uncommonly the bore is 
followed up by flocks of sea-birds, seeking small fish, and 
one bold species of the curlew variety has been seen 
caught in the boiling comb, then rising from behind the 
breaker, to seek again its prey in front. 

Scientific light on the origin of the bore, or " eigre," as 
it is more technically called, is rather dim. Maury and 
Ansted describe bores without explanation. Herschel 
and Somerville explain them, the one as the rush of a 
swift tide against a river current, the other as the result- 
ant of a tide rising rapidly at a spot where the restraining 
friction of the bottom is excessive. Perhaps we can at 
once harmonize and illustrate both explanations by imag- 
ining a pail of water dashed suddenly on a smooth floor 
and the little breaker created in front of the tiny tide by 
friction on the floor as analogous to the bore which 
sweeps over the upper flats of Fundy. Bores, however, 
are rare tidal curiosities, apparently only possible where 
the fiercest tides meet peculiar conformations of coast. 



THE GIANT TIDES OF FUNDY. 69 

More famous than those of Fundy are the bores in the 
Chinese river, Tsientang, the East Indian river, Hoogly, 
and the Amazon, some of which attain a height of thirty 
feet and a speed of twenty-five miles an hour. The speed 
of the Monckton bore was about that of a fast runner. 
At times the bores of the Bay of Fundy are followed 
quickly by second and third tidal breakers of lesser 
height. 

The figures subjoined, copied from an English tide- 
table, give the average height in feet of the Fundy tides 
at three places, compared with three of the highest of the 
North Atlantic tides on European shores. The figures 
for Sackville and Parrsborough are, however, much ex- 
aggerated. 



ng Tide. 


Neap Tide. 


50 


24 


32 


18 


Al% 


25 


42 


16 


i93< 


WA 


44 


22 



Sackville . 

Quaco 

Parrsborough . 

St. Germain (France) 

Thames River (England) 

Bristol (England) 

It ought perhaps to be explained further that when the 
sun and moon pull together — that is to say, when the 
moon is full or new — the highest or spring tides are pro- 
duced ; and that the neap or low tides occur when the 
moon is in quadrature and pulls at right angles, or nearly 
so, to the line of the sun's attraction. As a general truth, 
it is safe to say that the real height of the Fundy tides is 
much overrated. The phenomena are so vast and im- 



70 B y. WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

pressive that human nature finds exaggeration even easier 
than usual. Probably a forty-feet tide either in the Basin 
of Minas or the Bay of Chignecto is very uncommon ; one 
of fifty feet very rare indeed. The latter may, however, 
occasionally happen when the spring tides are naturally 
highest, and when united with them is an excess of water 
driven into the Bay of Fundy by a protracted and strong 
south wind. The figures for the range of tides, I presume, 
refer to the rise from the bottom at the place where the 
measurements are taken. If allowance is made for the 
ascent of bottom, from the mouth of the Bay of Fundy to 
its heads, higher figures would be reached. It will readily 
be seen that the varying elements of the problem, and 
particularly the uncommon coincidence of extreme spring 
tides with a southerly storm, make authentic data as to 
the very highest Fundy tides all but impossible to obtain. 
Local opinion is utterly untrustworthy. There is hot 
rivalry between half-a-dozen towns on the upper waters of 
the bay to prove title to the " highest tides in the world." 
One example will show the deceptiveness of local asser- 
tion : At Monckton everybody, talking of high tides, re- 
fers back to what is called the " Saxby tide " of a dozen 
years ago. Commander Saxby, of the British Navy, an 
authority on tidal movements, predicted for a certain date 
a great rise of water in the Bay of Fundy, Fortunately 
for his prophecy, there was a terrible southern gale on the 
day named, and the tide swelled to most devastating pro- 
portions. At a wharf in Monckton, which descends straight 



THE GIANT TIDES OF FUNDY. "J I 

to the low waters, I have measured carefully the distance 
with string, plummet, and yard-stick, then added the al- 
titude to the Saxby high-tide mark, as recorded on an 
adjacent building. By this test the whole rise from low- 
water to the top of the Saxby tide was forty-two feet and 
eight inches. Yet every good Moncktonite, with one 
hand on the Bible and the other on his heart, will assert 
his conviction that his tides often rise at least sixty 
feet. 

Still, with all allowance for local error, the titanic Fundy 
tides remain terribly grand and impressive sights. Many 
queer incidents attend their rise and fall. It is related 
that years ago a stranger vessel struck solidly on a rock in 
the bay during a high night tide. Next morning, to the 
bewilderment of the crew, they found their craft over- 
hanging a precipice. The immense flats left bare by the 
receding waters favor the fishermen, who, using very deep 
nets of the seine or gill sort, can shut off many acres of 
water ; and when the nets are left high and dry during 
the spring fisheries, near St. John, New Brunswick, fish 
are seen hanging high in air. Boys then climb the meshes 
as a ladder to bring down the cod or salmon from their 
airy perch. By no means the least of low-tide curiosities 
are the beds of the creeks cut by the currents through the 
lowlands at the upper waters of the bay. These tidal 
creeks are not, as with us, a steep bank of three or four 
feet, then a loose sand bottom, but deep gashes cut down 
to an acute angle at the bottom twenty feet below. The 



72 By.tVAYS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

creeks are usually about as deep as they are wide, and it 
seems as if some giant surgeon had slashed triangular sec- 
tions from the blood-red soil, leaving the wounded earth 
bleeding and ghastly. All these lowlands, extending over 
hundreds of thousands of acres, are diked in many direc- 
tions against the flood ; but once in a few years the muddy 
streams are let in to refresh the soil with their deposit. 
The diked lands fetch, some of them, two hundred dollars 
an acre, and the density and height of the hay crops 
raised on them almost pass belief. 

At St. John, a handsome city fronting a fair harbor at 
the mouth of a river of the same name, the Fundy tides 
make their first contact with intense civilization, and man- 
ifest themselves in singularly curious and interesting 
spectacles. The waters rise and fall through a range of 
some thirty feet — at full of tide, lifting the long lines of 
ships until their taffrails rise far above the wharves ; then 
dropping the hulks on a dry, hard bottom, so deep below 
that the sailors must climb down to their craft by ladders. 
The slips run dry, and where before were thirty feet of 
turbid tide the drays drive out loading and unloading 
by the bulwarks of the stranded ships. More amazing is 
the phenomenon in the harbor itself. The great tides at 
flood pour up the St. John River through a gorge form- 
ing a mighty stretch of roaring rapids, spanned by a 
suspension-bridge a hundred feet aloft. Twenty miles 
up-stream the fresh and salt fluids mix in a brackish cur- 
rent, which at ebb tide pours back through the chasm in 



THE GIANT TIDES OF FUNDY. 73 

a foam-flecked bedlam of waters. The traveller, at first 
wondering at the vastness and speed of the swift flood, 
scarcely believes his own vision when a few hours later he 
sees the roaring tide tumbling between the beetling cliffs 
in an opposite direction. It is as if one, on occasion, 
should discover the rapids above Niagara rushing back 
with inverted current toward Lake Erie. Churned into 
great masses of foam which, as steam-boat engineers will 
tell us, brackish waters when agitated readily generate, 
the river pours into the harbor. There the floating nebu- 
lae of foam cohere until they form beds of whiteness so 
like cakes of ice that the harbor in mid-summer puts on a 
wintry guise, and the stranger must rub his eyes to dispel 
the unseasonable illusion. 

Just below Parrsborough on the western shore of the 
Basin of Minas, the Fundy tides reach some of their 
lowest levels, and disclose one of the finest sights on the 
coast. The slope is stony, covered with small pebbles of 
slate, and the tide leaves a symmetrical curve descending 
like the quadrant of a great amphitheatre. Though the 
slope is so steep that it is difficult to climb, it takes a 
muscular and trained arm to throw a stone three quarters 
of the way down from high- to low-water mark. The 
slope, measured in paces, showed on one occasion about 
three hundred feet of distance, and afterward the waters 
receded half as far again. The wharf, built in two 
stories, looms up like the side of a tall building, yet a 
high spring tide sweeps its summit. Half way down the 



74 jBY-fVAYS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

wharf, standing in the mud, the steamer Hiawatha, of more 
than two hundred tons burthen, can reach with the sum- 
mit of her smoke-stack only the topmost mark left by the 
tide on the wharf. Around the point, a few miles from 
Parrsborough Wharf, the tide passes by Cape Split, 
through a channel a few miles wide, to fill up the great 
Basin of Minas. In the channel off the cape the current 
boils by at the rate of eleven miles an hour. The strongest 
vessel can scarcely make headway there in a gale against 
the rush of water, and the seamen say no craft can hold 
anchorage in the channel for a moment when the swift 
tide is running. 

Along the Basin of Minas is Acadia, the land of Evan- 
geline, immortalized by the plaintive hexameters of Long- 
fellow. Poetry is one thing, realism another. The modern 
Anglo-Acadians quote Nova Scotia history to prove that 
their evicted French predecessors were stalwart rogues of 
vindictive temper, who aided the Indians in their cruel 
warfare against the English ; and they aver stoutly that 
any Briton whom the strong tide left stranded among the 
poetry-haloed Basils, Gabriels, and Evangelines was rea- 
sonably sure to get his throat cut. 



NEWFOUNDLAND AND THE COD-FISHERS. 

THE traveller to Newfoundland from New York will 
have at least one illusion rudely dispelled before he 
reaches the island. We in the United States constantly 
think of Newfoundland as a country close to Canada and 
readily accessible. Geographically the idea is correct. 
The island, one of the largest on the globe, does, indeed, 
project to within sixty miles of Cape Breton, which is 
substantially the eastern point of Nova Scotia. But the 
Newfoundland we voyage to is another land. It is reached 
by way of the seaport oi St. John's, and is eleven hundred 
miles and five days' journey from New York. The fast 
ocean steamer, on her way to Liverpool, must consume 
three or four days to reach the island's southern shore at 
Cape Race. Then comes a country so isolated, so abun- 
dant in insular peculiarities, and, withal, so unknown to the 
outer world, that Greenland or Ethiopia can scarcely be 
called more remote. 

If a strong-armed ball-player were to take a rotten 
apple and with all his force hurl it against a wall, the 
result would be a crude but graphic likeness of the map 
of Newfoundland. The ragged outline of the island, its 
rough coast line, its infinite succession of deep bays, jut- 
ting headlands, and wild ravines of water, would be 
75 



76 BY-IVAYS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

depicted with a generalized but realistic fidelity. Two 
long bays at one point almost cut in twain this island, 
with its area of a little less than New York State. North- 
ward other bays, cutting sharply the land, expand into 
inland seas. Northward still a peninsula runs up almost 
to Labrador, like the arm of a huge frying-pan. To say 
that the coast, almost two thousand miles long, is rocky, 
describes it tamely. It is not rocky merely, but one great 
rock, now shooting up into peaks, now breaking into wild 
fissures, but always precipitous, bold, bare, and inacces- 
sible. Against the fierce wall of cliff four hundred feet 
high, running sheer into the ocean, the wild waves of the 
Atlantic break, the storm winds whistle, and the dreary 
fogs drift in dark encircling folds. Back of this dismal 
coast come mountains one thousand feet high, covered with 
cold, low firs, scant bushes, or absolutely bare. The in- 
terior of the island is almost an undescribed region. Tracts 
of land with ten thousand square miles are marked on the 
maps " unknown " or " unexplored." If one were to go 
ashore almost anywhere along the centre of that southern 
coast which is often distantly seen from the decks of the 
ocean steamers, he would, by a walk of ten miles inland 
reach a region where the white man has never set his foot ; 
and this in a country peopled by Great Britain three hun- 
dred years ago, and the oldest of her North American 
colonies. 

In picturesqueness of site no city on our continent equals 
St. John's, the capital and chief seaport of the country, 



NEWFOUNDLAND AND THE COD-FISHERS. 77 

with a population of some thirty thousaud. Sailing up 
the savage eastern coast, the steam-ship suddenly turns 
shoreward. It seems for a while as if the vessel was 
about to dash herself against the solid fringe of rock. But 
all at once there comes in sight a little crack in the rocky 
wall. Behind the cleft is a group of houses, perched on a 
hill which is almost a precipice. The vessel takes her 
pilot, and is steered for half a mile through the crack. 
The cliffs loom up for several hundred feet on either side, 
and it seems as though one could cast a stone between 
their beetling faces. A single short chain and a few heavy 
guns would bar the entrance against the navies of the 
world. Within, a sudden turn presently brings to view a 
placid haven, a mile long and half as wide. It is girded 
with the warehouses or factories of the fishing firms, by 
busy wharves and shipping. On the west the city slopes 
to the top of the hill, while on the eastern cliff the fisher- 
men have built their platforms for drying the cod. These 
platforms, technically called " flakes," give a most curious 
effect. They are stages set on poles stuck in every fissure 
and projection where the rock gives lodgment. The 
stages, or, as we may call them, the roofs of the flakes, 
are thatched with brushwood, on which the fish are laid 
in the sun. In one place these " flakes " rise in five great 
tiers, slanting backward in terraces like the pictures of the 
hanging gardens of Babylon. At spots one can walk for 
an eighth of 'a mile under these roofs of codfish, shutting 
out the sun and filling the air with odors too pungent for 



78 B y. WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

verbal description. A single sniff of St. John's air near 
the flakes is the equivalent of a whole lenten season of 
codfish diet. 

St. John's is one of the few cities of the world which 
have no local taxes. If her codfish smell, her local admin- 
istration does not. Even her schools are supported by a 
grant of the Newfoundland Government, which has no 
public debt and raises all its revenue from customs, the 
tariff averaging about fourteen per centum ad valorem. 
The isolation of the city may be inferred from the fact 
that it receives its mails from England and the United 
States but once a fortnight. The coming of the Allan 
Line steamer is an event that crowds the wharf and makes 
the city bustle with excitement. The climate of St. 
John's and of Newfoundland has the singular quality of 
improving wines, whole cargoes of which are shipped to 
the city to be kept a few years and reshipped to Europe. 

The people of Newfoundland may be separated into 
three divisions — the well-to-do residents of St. John's, the 
fishing class, and the French, who live on the far north- 
west coast. Many of the people of St. John's have 
wealth, accumulated from the seal and cod trade. They 
are cultivated people, of good manners, and hospitable to 
a point almost onerous to the recipient of their kindly 
courtesies. Their leading social amusement is card-play- 
ing, in which the seductive draw-poker takes the lead of 
other games. Even the best ladies play poker, with 
stakes adapted to the feminine standard. The prevailing 



NEWFOUNDLAND AND THE COD-FISHERS. 79 

type of nationality is English or Irish, modified by insular 
surroundings. Three quarters, at least, of the population 
of 180,000 in the whole island is made up of the poor 
fishermen. They are a hardy, rough race, familiar with 
every phase of ocean life, ignorant, narrow, and insular,* 
but kindly disposed. Some of their linguistic oddities, at 
the remoter fishing stations particularly, are worth noting. 
Like the Southern negro, who so often uses " him " for 
" it," so these islanders twist the word " he " into absurd 
combinations. " Will the trout be cooked soon ? " was 
asked the waiter girl at one of the coast inns. " Maybe 
he will be," was the reply. " The wagon has lost he's 
wheel," or" I don't know where the spade he is," illustrate 
further these peculiarities. The name of the island is 
almost universally pronounced New-fun-land, with strong 
accent on the final syllable. The marine habitude of the 
people crops out in the term " skipper," always employed 
by a subordinate in addressing a superior, or by a street 
boy accosting a gentleman. Northward is in Newfound- 
land " down " in direction, the phrase " down north " cor- 
responding pretty closely to the " down east " of our 
Middle and Western States. For the Newfoundlander's 
phrase " up south," we have no equivalent, excepting the 
" up to South End," of Boston. There is also a strange 
broadening of vowels in colloquial speech. Thus ridge be- 
comes in Newfoundlandese " rudge," and fire " fur." 
Many of them would say, " The forest has been ' furred,' " 
— /. e., burned over. The wives of the lower order of 



80 B Y- WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

islanders, who stay at home, till the soil, and do all the 
manual labor of the household, while their lords are at sea, 
become a brawny set of Amazons, terrible in domestic war- 
fare, and ruling their consorts in most imperative fashion. 
^ A party of thirty railroad surveyors who recently entered 
a little hamlet were put to flight by a few of these muscu- 
lar dames and forced to appeal to the police before they 
could continue their work. The lower classes, particularly 
the Irish, are intensely ignorant and superstitious. Not 
long ago, in one of the smaller towns, certain shrewd 
spirits wanted to change the local cemetery for a better 
burial-place, the old one being occasionally overflowed by 
the waters of Conception Bay. They carried their point 
easily by asserting that on winter nights they had seen the 
ghosts troop out to dance on the ice of the bay and pro- 
test against their moist treatment. 

The man who thinks that Newfoundland dogs of 
noble mien and build troop in droves through the 
country is, in our Yankee phrase, a good deal "off." 
The Newfoundland dog is not only, like the traditional 
prophet, without honor in his own country, but there 
are very few of him at all. The pure breed is almost 
extinct. We find any day in a New England town bet- 
ter dogs of the Newfoundland type than I have seen 
during a week's stay in the city of St. John's. The 
streets are filled with mongrels, big dogs, small dogs, 
spaniels, esquimaux, and mastiffs, but almost all low curs 
of vile breed and pattern. Well-informed Newfoundland- 



NEWFOUNDLAND AND THE COD-FISHERS. 8 1 

ers smile satirically when you extol their famous dogs, and 
go so far as to deny that the animal originated in the 
island at all. As a rule, the big black Newfoundland dog 
is a much-abused beast. He is sought out more for 
strength than for beauty, kept on low diet, used in winter 
to draw heavy sledges of wood, and is made any thing but 
a household divinity. His temper is good up to five 
years old, when he is apt to become snappish. The water 
is his natural home, and he will steal away at night and 
travel long distances for his bath. The tests of his purity 
of breed and general merits are a thick-webbed foot, large 
bushy tail, the comely shape and poise of the head, and 
deep black color on the roof of the mouth. His degen- 
eration is charged to the abuse of him as a beast of bur- 
den, and to one of the island's old laws to protect sheep, 
which has allowed policemen a fee of fifty cents each for 
shooting dogs found at large — a statute under which 
many fine dogs have been ruthlessly slaughtered. 

The earliest records of the island show that the aborigi- 
nal dog of the country was a good-tempered creature of 
great size, and so strong that he could draw from the 
water seals weighing hundreds of pounds. He had a pas- 
sionate fondness for the sea, lived on raw fish, and was a 
skilful fisher, swimming rapidly under water and catching 
his prey in his mouth. A case is cited where one of 
these dogs was seen catching fish for sheer sport, heaping 
them up on shore and then plunging in for others. The 
same records prove, however, that this dog was of an ex- 



82 BV-JVAVS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

tinct species very different from the present Newfoundland 
animal, though the latter, in this latitude, is very fond of 
raw fish. 

Next to its dogs, Newfoundland's fame rests on its 
fogs. The Arctic current, driving southward and along 
the coast, meets the Gulf Stream and condenses the 
warmer vapors, just as a glass of ice-water gathers drops. 
The mists comparatively seldom penetrate inland, but in 
one direction or another they hang around the island with 
a weird darkness like that of smoke, and closing in — a 
" sea turn " the islanders call it — make navigation on the 
cruel coast as dangerous as on any waters of the globe. 
Hundreds of stout ships have steered to wreck in the 
mists on the rock-ribbed shores, and a winter journey to 
St. John's is more perilous than a trip to Europe, the Allan 
steam-ships sometimes using eleven days for the five hun- 
dred and forty miles from Halifax to St. John's. A spot 
traditional for disaster is "Mistaken Point," a little west of 
Cape Race, so called because of the difficulty of distinguish- 
ing it in the fog from the cape itself. Here, within a few 
days of each other, the steam-ships Washington and Crom- 
well, in 1877, ran ashore and were lost, with some seventy 
lives, not a man escaping. From the heights above the fish- 
ermen saw corpses and wreckage churning against the lower 
chffs, but only two bodies were secured by an adventurous 
seaman, who went down the face of the rocks by a rope. 
Internally and as a whole — except, perhaps, in one tract 
yet to be penetrated by the railroad — Newfoundland is 



NEWFOUNDLAND AND THE COD-FISHERS. 83 

an unpromising region — a land of continuous rock, here 
and there covered with boggy wastes, and with vast areas 
where old fires, killing the low firs, have left wastes of 
dead trees that tire the eye with their monotony and ex- 
panse. The summers are brief and moderately warm, the 
springs marked by a marvellously sudden burst of vegeta- 
tion, the winters about as cold as those of New England, 
and attended by deep snow-falls. Along some of the 
roads are seen long lines of stakes as tall as small tele- 
graph poles, placed at short intervals, to mark out the 
winter path. The Vermont toll-house keeper who, after 
the big snow-fall, put out the notice, " Toll taken at the 
second-story window ; after the next storm please drop 
the change down the chimney," would have found a rare 
field for his drollery on these semi-Arctic winter roads. 
Newfoundland has lakes without number, some of them 
sixty miles long, and teeming with trout. She has wilder- 
nesses where game are abundant ; she raises fine vegeta- 
bles, and she produces, as late as August, fine crops of 
strawberries. But as yet she yields to commerce little 
except copper ore, seals, and codfish. Her people, as a 
rule, are so backward as almost to be archaic, and in St. 
John's the watchmen from ten o'clock to daylight call the 
hours. Excluding the wealthier classes, and decidedly 
including the alleged hotels of St. John's, the country 
still lacks essentially those prime elements of civilization, 
a clean bed and square meal. 

If the natives of Newfoundland are ever perverted 



84 B V- WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

to heathenism, their chief god will surely be the codfish. 
Already the cod almost touches divinity, or at least is the 
emblem of all things material. The Newfoundlanders 
recognize the dignity of their fish-god by stamping him 
on their local currency, and but for the manifest incon- 
venience would no doubt make him legal-tender for 
payment of debts. So ubiquitous is the fish, and so 
familiar does he become, that when one passes a fifty- 
cent piece at St. John's he half expects to find a ten- 
pound codfish among the small change. On official docu- 
ments, on postage stamps, on bank-notes, the cod and his 
familiar dewlap meet the eye. Spread on platforms, and 
broiling in the sun, he forms a fishy fringe around the 
island — a wall of defence, if not against invading armies, 
at least against the fiercer foes, poverty and starvation. 
The allegorical importance of the codfish is sustained by 
the facts and figures. The islanders catch probably not 
less than $7,000,000 worth a year, and more than half 
their annual exports of $8,000,000 are made up of their 
staple fishy commodity. Every part of the cod is 
useful : the head fried is an esculent dainty — a kind of 
compound of sweetbread and calves'-foot jelly ; the 
tongue cut out and nicely browned in the frying-pan is 
an improved imitation of the fried oyster; the skin is 
used for fine glue, the sounds are eaten or made into the 
isinglass of the cook-book, the Norwegians grind up the 
bones for cattle-feed, and the French buy the spawn for 
baiting their sardine fishing grounds- 



NEWFOUNDLAND AND THE COD-FISHERS. 85 

Stretching for hundreds of miles southward and south- 
eastward of the island, and sixty miles from shore at the 
nearest edge, is the Grand Bank of Newfoundland, that 
mystic table-land of the sea, whose limits and nature are 
still undefined. A little way oceanward from its slopes 
the sea reaches some of its greatest depths, and within 
its boundaries are depressions where the fisherman's 
anchor never touches bottom. Old cod-fishers say that 
the Grand Bank is steadily rising, and that a few centuries 
will find it jutting above the surface. The Grand Bank, 
with its adjuncts, is some six hundred miles long and 
from two to three hundred miles wide. The shallows 
over it vary from ninety to four hundred feet in depth. 
The Grand Bank is, beyond comparison, the finest fishing 
ground in the world. For centuries the fishermen have 
visited it, and milHons on millions of tons of codfish have 
been taken there, but still the yield is undiminished. 
Sometimes for two or three years the fish will be scarce, 
and the report will spread that the bank is " fished out," 
when suddenly a year of unprecedented catches will 
dissipate the theory. For about six months in the 
year, beginning with May, the codfish swarm, not only 
over the Grand Bank, but, in lesser size and numbers, 
along the whole North American shore from the latitude 
of New York to an unknown distance northward. They 
are found from the eastern waters of Long Island to 
the farthest extremes of Labrador, and even up to the 
regions of eternal ice. What lures the cod from the 



86 B Y- WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

ocean depths to which he goes in winter is not certainly 
known, but it is surmised that he either follows up the 
small shore fish or seeks the sea cherry — a small red berry 
that often grows on the weedy bottoms where the cod is 
found. It is also pretty well established that during the 
summer visit shoreward the female fish spawns. The im- 
mense race of cod, far outnumbering all the other large 
fish of the sea, is accounted for by its fecundity. Nine 
millions of eggs have been computed in the roe of a 
large specimen, and all the codfish caught by man are a 
mere cipher compared with the billions, large and small, 
swallowed by sharks and other fish of prey. 

One of the greatest curiosities among the inhabitants 
of the deep is the squid, in Newfoundland the orthodox 
bait for killing the codfish. The squid is a smaller spe' 
cies of the huge devil-fish, or octopus, wonderful speci- 
mens of which have of late years been found on the 
Newfoundland coast. The squid, take him concretely, is 
a revolting-looking creature. Cut a section, say ten 
inches long, from a common eel, transform its flesh 
into a tough jelly, give it a cruciform tail at one end and 
eight short sucker-armed feelers at the other ; conceive 
the suckers, each armed with a circle of small teeth, 
and the feelers converging to a cruel hawk-like beak — 
then we shall have a weak likeness of the squid. The 
creature's mode of progression is original. It has within 
its body an elastic suction-tube holding almost a pint of 
water. Filling the tube by drawing water through holes 



NEWFOUNDLAND AND THE COD-FISHERS. 87 

in its mantle, the squid, by a sudden squirt, drives itself 
backward as fast as a fish can swim, and by inverting 
its tube can move with equal velocity in the opposite 
direction. Jigging for these squids is a rare spectacle. 
The " jigger " is a red stick of wood circled with sharp 
but barbless hooks. The hook is let down, the squid, 
which enters the Newfoundland bays by myriads for food, 
is attracted by the red color, clasps its arms over the 
hooks, and is drawn up to its death. But as it reaches 
the surface the novice must be on guard, for the squid 
shoots straight at its captor his charge of water, followed 
by another squirt of an inky fluid, which on light 
garments is almost indeHble. The fishermen know the 
creature's trick, and by a skilful movement induce the 
squid to deliver his charges upon one side, then by a 
quick inversion of the hook drop the squid in the boat. 
A squid-fishing fleet of boats, closely grouped, so as to 
keep the schools of lively octopi collected, is an ani- 
mated sight. Each man tends three or four lines, and 
has all he can do when squid are around. The bustle 
of the fishers, the thumping of the squid in the boats, 
and the incessant squirts of water to a height of several 
feet in all directions through the fleet, make up a most 
picturesque sea spectacle. The flesh of the squid has 
some poisonous quality that makes even the tough skins 
of the fishermen sore by long handling. On the codfish 
hook its flesh grows white and tough, making very allur- 
ing bait. 



88 £ y. WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

Closely allied to the squid as cod bait is the caplin. 
The caplin is a small fish, of the salmon species, about the 
size of the smelt, and very like it in appearance. It never 
varies more than two or three days in the time of its 
coming to the Newfoundland shores, where, late in June, 
it suddenly throngs all the bays in prodigious numbers. 
A single boy with a small dip-net can catch several tons 
a day, and a few men can readily secure a schooner load. 
The waves dash the caplin on the shores in great numbers, 
and the residents often cart them away for manure. Al- 
though a delicious fish, much like the trout in flavor, the 
caplin is rarely eaten. Indeed, for a fishing people, the 
Newfoundlanders are amazingly backward in the use of 
their food fish. Few of them even know how to cook the 
cod so as to be eatable ; they rarely eat the trout with 
which their inland waters are filled ; and though they 
raise the best potatoes in the world, they seem profoundly 
ignorant of that delicious product of Yankee-land, the 
codfish-ball. After the caplin go away, in July, the squid 
come in, and after them the herring, so that Providence 
has provided a triple series of cod baits, without any one 
of which a third of the season would be lost. 

His bait once assured, the fisherman begins his toilsome 
season on the fishing grounds, seeking the Grand Bank, 
heretofore referred to, the inshore fisheries, or the coast 
of Labrador. The fish off Labrador, or on the Grand 
Bank, are always largest and most valuable, but the fish- 
erman there must incur vexatious delays in securing fresh 



NEWFOUNDLAND AND THE COD-FISHERS, 89 

bait or in going shoreward to dry his product. His is 
an arduous and perilous calling. The cod usually bite 
best at sunset or sunrise, and often tug at the lines all 
night. So by darkness and day the fisher is at his post, 
save when a storm forces him to heave-to on the Banks, 
or, nearer shore, drives him to port. The rasping line, 
drawn up often from a depth of two hundred feet, cuts 
his fingers ; the poisonous squid and salt used in canning 
the fish wear the skin to the blood ; hunger, exposure, dan- 
ger, are all his lot. Moreover, in Newfoundland, he fishes 
for a hard master, the wholesale dealer, who furnishes 
the equipment, taking as security a chattel mortgage, thus 
bringing the poor, ignorant fisherman in debt at the open- 
ing of the season. It is reckoned a fair season's catch if 
the fisherman comes out with profits of one hundred 
and twenty dollars, on which he must weather through 
with wife and children the piercing winter months. 
During his absence the wife tills the ground, rears 
the children, and even cures the fish which her lord 
brings home. On his return from the remoter banks, 
often after an absence of five months, the fisherman 
relapses into sulky idleness for the rest of the year. 
He sits by the fireside with his pipe, leaving his wife to do 
the household work, and becoming by comparison with 
his decidedly better half a most inconsequential and good- 
for-nothing creature. He may be captain on the water, 
but his wife is full commander on shore, and the subjec- 
tion to which these imperious fish-wives reduce their 



90 BY- WAYS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

nominal lords and masters is a funny side of social phen- 
omena in the queer island. 

The cod is any thing but a gamesome fish, A few- 
initial struggles way down in the depths, and he comes 
up with a dead pull, like a log. Unless very large and 
hungry, he bites daintily ; and out of ten that bite prob- 
ably but one is hooked. 

In " trawling," the fisherman sinks a long rope fitted 
with short snoods and hooks. The rope is ingeniously 
buoyed to logs, to which is attached a staff and flag in 
such a way that each wave throws the flag in air and sig- 
nals its spot. Two men in a boat, often several times a 
day, " underrun " the trawl — the man in front drawing up 
and taking off the fish, while his companion baits. The 
" seine," so called locally, is a net of great length and 
depth, so arranged as to " purse " at the bottom by a 
drawn cord, and secure the fish in the same manner that 
menhaden are caught on our coasts. The local title of 
" trap " is applied to a contrivance much like our fish- 
pounds, but made entirely of nets. The seine and trap 
are both used effectively when the cod is gorged with 
caplin or squid and refuses to bite. 

To cure a codfish well requires care and experience, 
and unless done well all the fisher's toil may go for little. 
The cod is usually passed to a gang of four men. One 
rips up the fish, a second takes out the entrails and cuts 
off the head, a third — usually the best man of the gang 
— by a deft movement cuts out the backbone, a fourth 



NEWFOUNDLAND AND THE COD-FISHERS. 9 1 

spreads on the salt and lays the fish in a pile. Then the 
heaps of cod are distributed on the flakes, or fir-strewn 
platforms, reared along the shores. Everywhere in the 
neighborhood of the unnumbered fishing villages these 
broad platforms appear, now perched in a cleft of the 
rocks, now rising in tiers, but always placed near the sea, 
in which the offal is dropped. During the curing, which 
lasts two or three weeks, the fish must be watched care- 
fully. If left too long on one side, they become " over- 
salted." The sun in that case draws the salt to one side, 
leaving the other soft or rank, and the fish is almost un- 
salable. Then they must be heaped up at night, covered 
with canvas or oil-cloth against rain, and tended almost as 
sedulously as babes. When ready for market they are 
sold to the wholesale dealers, bringing at St. John's, dur- 
ing a scarce season, only five cents a pound. Newfound- 
land finds her chief market in Roman Catholic countries, 
where the fish are consumed during Lent. Lately, how- 
ever, the Norwegians have become hot rivals of the 
Newfoundlanders in the European markets. American 
housewives may be glad to know that the local tests of 
a good salt codfish are a surface hard and well dried on 
both sides, white flesh, and an absence of salty crystal- 
lizations. Efforts, thus far, to utilize as compost the 
thousands of tons of offal annually wasted have failed, 
and the same is substantially true of attempts to preserve 
the delicate caplin in some permanent edible form. 

Taken as a whole, the life of the poor fisherman of 



92 B Y- IVA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

Newfoundland is far from enviable. Half-starved at 
home, cheated by the merchant, sunk in squalor, filth, 
and misery, he drifts easily into dull routine and a kind 
of mental stupor. He somehow — partly, it would seem, 
by his very lack of aspiration — preserves his good temper; 
he becomes a marvellous seaman, and he can dress fish 
with the precision and speed of a machine. But his whole 
horizon, like his island, is bounded by a circle of cod, and 
even Paradise, to his vision, resolves itself into an Eden 
whose seas teem with codfish, and whose markets the 
Yankee and Norwegian never can invade. 



SEAL-HUNTING ON THE ICE-FIELDS. 

AMONG the many strange industries of the world 
that exact from men hardihood, persistence, and 
daring, scarcely one compares with the pursuit of the oil 
seal, a calling substantially monopolized by the New- 
foundlanders. The seal here referred to must, at the out- 
set, be distinguished from the fur seal of Alaska, whose 
soft coat makes warm the heart of the city belle in exact 
proportion as the face of paterfamilias grows blue and his 
pocket-book thin. The creature sought by the Newfound- 
lander yields only oil and a coarse-grained but expensive 
leather ; he comes down on the ice from the far Arctic 
every spring, and soon after the breeding period, which 
begins about the middle of March, the fierce hunt for him 
opens, lasting until about the end of April. How important 
this industry is to Newfoundland may be conceived of 
from the fact that about six thousand men engage in it 
each season at St. John's alone, while the annual exports 
of seal products reach a value of more than $1,000,000. 
Next to the omnipresent codfish, the seal is the com- 
mercial staple of Newfoundland, and deprived of the animal 
the islanders would be forced to bridge a terrible gap of 
semi-starvation and poverty. 

The life of the seal, or " swoil," as the Newfoundland- 
93 



94 BV-WAVS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

ers call him, is a most curious career of variety and change. 
Little can be said of the mysteries of his winter life, which 
is passed far up on the edges of the lower Arctic zone of 
ice, which, breaking away in early spring, floats southward 
on the Labrador sea-current. Their gregarious habit then 
brings the seals together in immense numbers, and old 
sealers tell of having seen dozens of acres of ice so thickly 
covered that the creatures could scarcely move. As the 
ice drifts into melting latitudes the troops of seals disperse. 
Where they go is uncertain, except that a few scattered 
wanderers swim southward along the coast of the United 
States as far as the Delaware River. The majority, no 
doubt, return to the Arctic ice-fringes, where, though 
warm-blooded creatures, they find their most congenial 
home. The food of the full-grown seal is another of the 
mysteries of its existence. In the shallows it is fish, but 
the seal is often found fat and rotund on the Atlantic ice, 
sailing for long distances over depths where small fish 
either never live at all or live a mile or two below the sur- 
face. The breeding period begins about the middle of 
March, after the ice has floated to a point some six 
hundred miles north of St. John's, the female seal bring- 
ing forth her single young on the hummocks. Then 
occurs a most extraordinary freak of growth. The young 
at birth weigh about five pounds. In fifteen days they 
weigh forty or fifty, gaining sometimes as much as five 
pounds in twenty-four hours. Nature furnishes the " white- 
coat," as the baby seal is called, an oily coating of blub- 



SEAL-HUNTING ON THE ICE-FIELDS. 95 

ber just beneath the skin, which in ten days thickens from 
half an inch to three inches, or even four. The young 
seal during this period of astonishing development lives 
on its mother's milk and on animalculae which it sucks 
from the pores of the thin drift-ice. The seal fisher- 
men have half-a-dozen names for the seals at various stages 
of growth. They are, " white-coats," " harps " (from a 
dark harp-shaped mark upon the back), " bedlamers," 
" hoods," and " doghoods," according to age. The dog- 
hood is the old male seal, which is equipped with a thick 
skin on the head and neck. When attacked, the doghood 
resists fiercely, and the hardest blow makes no impression 
on the tough integument which the animal draws up in 
folds so as to completely .cover the forehead and nose. 

The sailing of the seal fleet from St. John's early in 
March is the momentous event of the year. All through 
the long winter, shut in by deep snows, living in utter 
idleness and depressed by chill poverty, the fisherman has 
eked out an existence most miserable and monotonous. 
With March and the sealing season his fetters are broken, 
and there comes an abrupt transition. Ontnis longo solvit 
se Teucria luctu. The fishermen, hardy, muscular fellows, 
inured to the sea, crowd the streets. The great sealing 
firms are fitting out their craft ; there is a hum of life on 
the wharves; business everywhere in the town awakes, 
and the whole city feels new life and impulse. On the 
first of March the sailing vessels leave for the northward 
" to meet the ice," as the local phrase goes. They are 



96 B Y- WA YS OF NA TURK AND LIFE. 

allowed twelve days' start of the sealing steamers, which 
go on the 12th of March every year. These steamers are 
staunch craft, some of them so large as to be of eight 
hundred tons register. Their bows are iron-plated against 
the thick ice which they must often encounter to reach the 
breeding-grounds of the seal. They are crowded with 
sealers, not unfrequently carrying as many as two hundred 
and fifty men, "sardined" three in a bunk scarcely the 
same number of feet wide. Altogether some twenty of 
these steam-vessels, with three thousand hands, leave the 
harbor almost simultaneously. The wharves are crowded, 
flags flutter in the breeze, and saluting cannon roar their 
sonorous farewells. But, lively as is the day of departure 
in these times, it is tame compared to the going of the 
sailing ships thirty years ago, before steamers had well 
nigh monopolized the trade. In those days there sailed 
each year almost four hundred vessels, manned by thirteen 
thousand men, and old residents of St. John's dilate with 
pride when they picture the magnificent sight on the day 
when the great fleet put to sea. 

Now the four or five days' voyage to meet the south- 
ward-moving ice begins. Keen watchmen on the masts 
keep watch for the first sign of a seal herd. The super- 
stitious sealers greet as a happy omen the finding of a 
solitary baby " white-coat " on a strip of ice. Some of 
them kill the creature, and, like the ancient augurs, ex- 
amine the entrails, professing to know occult signs show- 
ing the direction in which the seal herd must be sought. 



SEAL-HUNTING ON THE ICE-FIELDS. 9/ 

Others say that the direction of the baby seal's nose when 
first seen proves where the herd is, and still others take 
on board the baby and keep it ahve " for luck." Erelong, 
if good fortune follows the craft, the seals are sighted. 
The steamer runs into the broad ice-fields, the deck cov- 
ered with excited men waiting the signal to disembark. 
The ice, perhaps, is covered for half a square mile with the 
young seals, fifteen days old, incapable of taking to the 
water, and watched by father and mother seals, who never 
desert their young in extremity. Another moment, and 
two hundred frenzied men, armed with long staves, are 
over the sides, and the slaughter opens. A scene follows 
which even hardened sealers describe as piteous. A 
blow on the nose stuns the young seal. Then, drawing a 
sharp knife, the sealer, with wonderful celerity, rips open 
the skin and blubber, pulls out the gory carcass, and leaves 
both on the ice to take another victim. The seals have a 
cry almost exactly like a human being, and tears like those 
of mortals fall from their eyes. Their wild wailings, the 
piteous attempts of the mothers to shield their young, the 
bloody ice, the quivering carcasses crawling often some 
distance before life is extinct, and the shouts of the 
butchers, make a sight that beggars all description. The 
massacre done, the " pelts," as the hides with the attached 
blubber are technically called, are put on board the 
steamer, which, if not loaded, begins search for a new 
herd and fresh butchery. Only the young seals are killed 
on this first voyage, as their pelts are proportionately more 



98 BV.fVAVS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

valuable, and the old seals can be left for a second ven- 
ture later in the season. 

These sealing voyages are either immense successes or 
most costly failures. Tens of thousands of dollars are 
needed to equip the vessels, which sometimes return with- 
out a solitary pelt. But the profits of one good voyage 
compensate for several bad ones. The pelts fetch in some 
years as much as four dollars each, and instances are re- 
corded where more than forty thousand have been brought 
■in by a single steamer. One of the largest catches on 
record is that of the steamer Resolute, which, some years 
ago, after a short voyage, returned with forty-two thou- 
sand pelts, worth one hundred and twenty-five thousand 
dollars. Seal pelts had to be loaded into the berths, 
even the boats were filled, and the vessel steamed but 
three and a half knots an hour during her return to 
St. John's. In the city excitement runs high during 
the absence of the steamers. Bets are made on their 
takes, the respective merits of their captains are can- 
vassed, every arrival is noted with eager interest, and 
trembling owners await the news that heralds great profits 
or a heavy loss for the year. At best the business is a 
huge "gamble," needing large capital and persistent 
struggle. One firm, for instance, which a few years ago 
made a hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars in 
one season, has, in the year of this writing, lost eighty 
thousand dollars. The captains of the craft are paid 
a royalty of ten cents a seal. Of the cargo, after the roy- 



SEAL-HUNTING ON THE ICE-FIELDS. 99 

alty is deducted, one third goes to the crew and two thirds 
to the ship-owners, who find vessel, supplies, and equip- 
ment. 

A motley and curious lot are the men who for a few 
weeks in the year hunt the seal. Stalwart in frame, used 
to the sea until they have absolute contempt of its ter- 
rors, bold in adventures on the treacherous ice-floes, and 
marvellously skilled in seal lore, they make up a body of 
men in some respects not to be matched on the globe. 
Crowded like pigs on a sealing steamer, they cultivate a 
positive affection for dirt, and regard it as a kind of hon- 
orable badge of their adventurous calling. During a voy- 
age of several weeks they never take off their clothes, 
even to sleep. The oil from seal blubber fairly drips from 
their garments, dirt, soot, and tar adhere to their faces in 
steadily thickening strata, and when they finally enter 
port to strut the streets in unwashed glory they are in- 
carnate emblems of filth and odor. A night in St. John's 
after the arrival of two or three lucky seal crews means 
bedlam for the city. Honest burghers fly the streets and 
look well to the doors and shutters o' nights. On the ice 
the endurance, surefootedness, and daring of the seal- 
hunters are well-nigh incredible. They leap from cake to 
cake where it seems even a child could not be sustained, 
drag their heavy boats long distances through the hum- 
mocks, and think nothing of passing a night on the ice 
far from the steamer, provided only seal are near. Their 
cold hands they warm by thrusting them in gashes cut in 



lOO £ y. WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

the still palpitating carcass of the seal, and one instance 
is recorded where a freezing sealer saved his life by heap- 
ing up the gory carcasses for a night over his own body. 
When hunting, the sealers go by twos so that one can aid 
his companion should he fall in the water between the 
floes. Though the finding of the seal herds is largely a 
matter of luck, considerable depends on the sagacity of 
the captain, who, if up to his business, watches carefully 
all the winds of late February and early March so as to 
know where and when the ice can best be met. 

Curious and isolated facts gathered from sealing ex- 
periences are retailed without number. Some years 
ago, during an otherwise bad season, the seals " struck 
in " on the ice near the Newfoundland coast while the 
steamers were away. Women and children, leaving the 
shore, engaged in the slaughter, and during a few days 
sixty-four thousand head were killed within a few miles 
of St. John's. At about the same time a cyclops among 
seals was found with only a single perfectly-developed eye 
exactly in the centre of the forehead. In another case a 
large shapely animal had eight flippers instead of four, the 
usual number. The flippers of the novel creature, all of 
full size, were arranged symmetrically by fours on the up- 
per and lower parts of the body. Whether these speci- 
mens were freaks of nature or represented separate species, 
is a question for zoologists. The flippers of the seal, 
by the way, when fried are reckoned a rare dainty by the 
islanders, and are often brought back from the ice in long 



SEAL-HUNTING ON THE ICE-FIELDS, lOI 

strings to be kept for food. When, as rarely happens, 
more seals are found than a single steamer can load, the 
surplus are killed and the pelts heaped on the ice, to be 
marked with the steamer's flag. In that case an unloaded 
vessel can bring in the pelts and demand a certain large 
percentage of their value. On their second voyage out 
the steamers seek the full-grown animals, which weigh 
some two hundred pounds. They are fierce fellows, who 
force their way to the water and have to be shot, making 
the process of collecting pelts slow and unprofitable as 
compared with the capture of a new-born herd. 

When the steamers arrive the pelts are unloaded and 
transferred to the oil factories which line the eastern 
border of St. John's harbor. The blubber is separated 
from the pelt to be tried into oil, which is used for lubri- 
cating, for fine soaps, and a dozen other purposes. The 
skins are salted, then sent to Europe, where they are 
tanned into coarse but handsome leather, particularly 
beautiful for its graining, and worked up for purses, costly 
book-binding, and like uses. As stated, the sealing busi- 
ness of the North Atlantic is almost monopolized by the 
Newfoundlanders. A fleet of steamers, belonging to a 
firm at Dundee, Scotland, sails every year to the ice-fields, 
but they take their crews at St. John's, and there also is 
the factory of the owners. The monopoly is now, and 
promises to be for all time, a natural one, founded solidly 
on proximity to the ice and still firmer on the long tradi- 
tions, the trained experience, and the almost reckless en- 
terprise of the bold island sealers. 



HEART'S CONTENT AND THE OCEAN 
CABLES. 

A LITTLE more than a quarter of a century has 
gone by since the laying of the first ocean cable 
and the transmission of a message woke the country to 
wild enthusiasm and demonstrated the possibility of 
wedding two continents in electric bonds. The union 
was but a momentary and sentimental one. Almost on 
the day that the first message passed, the grim news 
spread that the cable had broken. In those days there 
were not wanting men of repute in the scientific world 
who predicted that the obstacles to ocean cable-laying 
were insuperable. The attrition of rocks and sand, the 
corrosion by the ocean brine, the necessary flaws in so 
long a span of cable, were urged stoutly as bars to an 
enterprise which might stir international sentiment, but 
would never, as was asserted, be a practical reality. At 
this distance, and in the vivid light of things done, it is 
curious to recall the delusive fears of that sceptical day — 
to find five years afterward a new cable laid, the old one 
repaired, and success not exciting a tithe of the enthusi- 
asm created by the earlier failure ; to be brought face to 
face, as a familiar and every-day fact, with the daily trans- 
mission of hundreds of sub-ocean messages ; to know that 

I02 



HEART'S CONTENT AND OCEAN CABLES. IO3 

cables are laid and repaired with as much precision and 
certainty as the prosaic land-wire, and that stockholders 
look to them for dividends with as much confidence as to 
the railroad, the factory, or the bank; and, finally, 
remembering the later marvels of electrical discovery, to 
look onward to an era when even the telegraph and cable 
may perhaps become obsolete. 

On the rugged shores of Trinity Bay, Newfoundland, 
is Heart's Content, the great station of the Anglo-Ameri- 
can Company, where three of their cables land. The bay, 
now famous in the annals of ocean telegraphy, is a body 
of water about as large as Long Island Sound, cutting 
straight into the bleak shores of Newfoundland, and, like 
all those shores, rocky, sheer, and fatal to the mariner 
whose craft strikes them during high seas. In each of 
the little harbors of the bay is a small group of fishing 
huts, and Heart's Content itself scarcely deserves the title 
of a village. During the winter the large bay is fairly 
buried in drift ice, on which teams can drive across ; in 
the spring towering icebergs, loosed from their Arctic 
moorings, drift in, and, but for the vast depth of water 
they draw, would dash against the shore. As it is, they 
strike the bottom in deep water, making a mighty stir as 
they roll in the turbid tide, until, unbalanced by the heat 
of the sun, which melts them above, they fall over with a 
crash. During the month of August, I have seen in the 
bay one of these stately visitors, the survivor of a great 
company of bergs that entered the waters the preceding 



104 BV-PFAYS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

spring. The telegraphers at their station in Heart's Con- 
tent have isolation with a vengeance. On the barren road 
to Carbonear, the nearest settlement of any size for twelve 
miles, one finds only a single house, and that the dwelling 
of a telegraph repairer. In the winter the road is almost 
closed by deep snow, and poles nearly as high as those of 
the telegraph have to be set up to mark out the path. 
To St. John's, forty miles farther on, is also a rough 
journey, and altogether the telegraphers, surrounded only 
by fishing huts and hemmed in by their rocky walls, have 
a dreary life of routine that almost makes the name 
Heart's Content one of derision. In all, the cable station 
gives employment to about thirty persons. The opera- 
tors, picked men in their calling, are most courteous and 
intelligent gentlemen. The Anglo-American Company 
has to pay them well, as it should, for their life of 
seclusion. They each receive fifteen hundred dollars a 
year besides a handsome dormitory, and their annual 
vacation of a month each year can, at the option of the 
operators, be exchanged for three months every three 
years, so as to enable them to revisit their English homes. 
Many of them have families, and one of them has been in 
the service of the company at Heart's Content for sixteen 
years. But at best, shut out from the world and environed 
during the winter by deep ice and snows, existence must 
be terribly dreary in that remote corner where science and 
civilization touch one of nature's roughest outposts. 
A spacious building, looming up like a Colossus over 



HEART'S CONTENT AND OCEAN CABLES. I05 

the low dwellings of the fishermen, contains the apparatus 
by which the cable messages are sent or received. Within 
is a glittering medley of brasswork, keys and key-boards, 
wheels, jars, wires, and general telegraphic paraphernalia. 
The air hums with the click of instruments, and the room 
on a working day is a hive of industry. First to attract 
the eye, and foremost as to interest, is the " recorder," 
the instrument that receives the message after its instant 
journey under seventeen hundred miles of water. The 
recorder is a horseshoe magnet, electrified by the usual 
circles of fine wire, and attracting a small metallic coil. 
The coil is hung between the magnetic poles, and by a 
light lever and a thread almost as fine as the strand of a 
cobweb, is connected with a delicate syphon hung in a 
little reservoir of ink. The ink is electrified, so as to pro- 
duce a repulsion of the particles, making it flow more 
readily through the syphon, which outside is about the 
size of a darning-needle, and the interior tube scarcely 
larger than a hair. The lower end of the syphon rests 
against a paper tape playing perpendicularly through 
rollers. The whole machine is of gossamer fineness and 
flexibility, so as to minimize the electric strain necessary 
for working the cable. 

Let us imagine now that a coming message has been 
signalled from far across the ocean at Valencia. The op- 
erator at first opens the simple machinery that works the 
brass rollers. On the centre of the tape, as it passes be- 
tween the rollers, the syphon at first marks only a straight 



io6 



B Y. WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 



line. Suddenly the line swerves to the right or left. The 
message has started, and the end of the syphon has begun 
its record. Worked by two keys, and positively or nega- 
tively electrified, the coil swings the syphon point now to 
one side, now to the other, along the tape. Responsive 
to the trained hand of the operator, the filament of ink 
marks out one notch, two notches, three notches ; then 
suddenly, it may be, a high elevation or depression until 
the delicate line traced on the tape looks like the tiny out- 
line of a mountain range. But it is a range whose every 
hill-top, peak, and valley means an alphabetical symbol to 
the telegrapher's eye. The diagram annexed shows two 
sections of the tape and the curves corresponding with 
several letters and numerals. 





The recorder is the invention of the famous electrician 
Sir William Thompson. How delicate an interpreter it is 



HEART'S CONTENT AND OCEAN CABLES. 10/ 

may be inferred from the fact that ten jars work eighteen 
hundred miles of cable between Valentia and Heart's Con- 
tent, while twenty-five jars of the same electric power 
would be needed to work three hundred and fifty miles of 
land-wire ; in other terms, the recorder is more than 
twelve times as efficient for its purpose as the ordinary 
Morse instrument. The recorder traces its characters on 
the tape about as fast as a slow penman copies a letter. 
Besides its delicacy of work, the recorder, as its name im- 
ports, has the merit of leaving the record of the message 
— a point which in a lawsuit involving an alleged mistake 
of a word might save the company thousands of dollars. 

Superseded by the recorder, but an instrument still used 
as a substitute in emergencies, is the reflector. It is an 
electric adaptation of reflected light, not much unlike the 
process by which a child amuses itself when darting 
round a room the ray from a hand-mirror. As the slight- 
est turn of the glass will throw the reflection through 
a great arc, so in the telegraphic instrument a wide move- 
ment of a ray follows from a little vibration of a mirror, 
and there is corresponding economy of electric strain. 
The mirror is set in a metallic case, which when electrified 
gives a double motion. A bright lamp shining through a 
slit makes an upright bar of light, which is reflected into 
a dark box a yard away and plays to one side or the other 
of a line in the centre. Looking into the box the lay- 
man sees only a flash darting to right and left. But these 
double flashes give the dot and dash which in various 



I08 B Y. WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

combinations are all the telegrapher needs to construct 
his alphabet. The reflector is less intricate than the 
recorder, but as it could not register the message it was 
discarded. The motive of lessening the strain on the 
cable, which prompts the use of both the recorder and re- 
flector with their gossamer devices, is also the underlying 
cause of the establishment of the station at Heart's Con- 
tent. To pass the current directly to the land-wires 
seemed an undue risk. Hence Heart's Content is made 
the resting-place of the messages over three cables, and 
there they are transferred to land-wires and forwarded to 
their destination in the usual telegraphic way. In addi- 
tion to the three cables landed at Heart's Content, the 
Anglo-American Company operate the French cable run- 
ning from Brest, France, to the island of St. Pierre, south 
of Newfoundland, and thence to the coast of the United 
States. 

The work of locating a break or flaw in the cable — 
a process seemingly so abstruse — is, with the present im- 
proved instruments, comparatively quick and easy. Dis- 
carding technicalities, we may say simply that the whole 
electric potency of the cable when fully charged is known, 
and the same can be quickly ascertained of the two parts 
created by a break. A dehcate machine adjusted to the 
nicest fractions discloses the electric units or " ohms " in 
each part, and as the number of ohms to the mile is 
known, the miles and fractions of miles in both parts can 
be found out at each end of the cable. In the case of a 



HEART'S CON-TENT AND OCEAN CABLES. IO9 

clean break the locating of it takes about fifteen minutes. 
But a very angular break, or a flaw, makes perturbations of 
the measurement which it, now and then, takes some hours 
to rectify. The usual cause of breaks or flaws is attri- 
tion on rocks or sand ; and sometimes a break in very 
deep water indicates that sea-currents of considerable 
force prevail there, contrary to the generally accepted 
theory that deep-sea waters are always placid. Most of 
the fractures, however, take place in shallows, and many 
of them are due to the dragging anchors of the fisher 
craft. In two or three instances the cables have 
evidently been snapped by enraged or hungry fish. 

The cable steamer Minia lies constantly in the harbor 
of Halifax, fully equipped and awaiting her calls to ser- 
vice. She is a staunch craft of some three thousand tons 
burthen, and with unusual beam for a vessel of her length. 
Her work consists entirely of repairing, the laying of full- 
length cables being relegated to large steamers like the 
Great Eastern, the Hooper, or the Faraday. Occasionally, 
however, the Minia is required to relay considerable parts, 
and she carries regularly in her tanks about six hundred 
miles of fresh cable. The tanks, some twenty -five feet in 
diameter, reach far down into her capacious hold, and the 
cables are coiled in a deep layer around a central core. 
The larger the core the less the capacity of the tank, and, 
on the other hand, the smaller the core the greater the 
danger that the paying-out cable will kink and foul 
when it reaches the smaller central coils. To partly avoid 



1 10 BV-fVAVS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

this difficulty, a large force of men — sometimes as many 
as thirty — are placed in a circle around the interior of 
the tank, and each man as the cable lifts before him holds 
down the adjacent coils and sees that the cable is free. 
It not uncommonly happens that one of these watchers 
grows careless and is knocked by one of the ascending 
coils heels over head among his fellows, for the modern 
cable steamers often pay out the coils with a speed reach- 
ing seven or eight miles an hour. After running from the 
tanks the cable passes over a series of wheels, fitted with 
a powerful system of brakes, which can be applied in- 
stantly. Then it goes over a wheel, at the stem, and 
is dropped into the ocean. In picking up the cable 
the coils pass over a large wheel, thence to the tanks, 
where they are carefully relaid. The modern first-class 
Atlantic cable is made of (i) seven central strands of fine 
copper wire twisted together ; (2) a tightly fitting tube 
of solid gutta-percha ; (3) a wrapping of jute ; (4) a cover- 
ing of thick wires, and (5) a final wrapping of thick tarred 
tape several inches wide. The deep-water cable of these 
days, when finished, is about an inch in diameter, the 
shore cable often an inch and a half. In paying out 
as well as taking in cable the utmost care must be 
used, and even then at times an unexpected kink may 
not only break the cable but tear to pieces the wheels, 
brakes, and other valuable machinery. 

The machinery used for picking up a cable in both deep 
and shallow water is of the most simple description. It 



HEART'S CONTENT AND OCEAN CABLES. Ill 

consists of a rope about an inch and a quarter in diameter, 
made from twisted strands of the strongest hemp, with 
interwoven wires of fine steel. The grapnel at the end is 
merely a solid shaft of iron some two feet long, weighing 
about a hundred pounds, and prolonged into six blunt 
hooks which very much resemble the partly closed fingers 
of the human hand. In picking up the cable in deep 
water the Minia, after reaching the waters near the break, 
lets out her rope and grapnel, then takes a course at right 
angles to the cable and at some distance from the fracture, 
so that the broken end may not slip through the grapnel. 
The grapnel rope is attached to a dynamometer which ex- 
actly measures the strain on the rope, and shows unerr- 
ingly when the cable has been caught. If the grapnel 
fouls a rock the strain rises very suddenly and to a high 
point ; but as the exact weight of the cable is known, the 
dynamometer signals by the steady ratio of increase its 
hold on the cable far below. The ease and certainty with 
which the cables are picked up in these days are amazing. 
Awhile ago one of the lines of the Anglo-American Com- 
pany was caught without trouble at a depth of two and a 
quarter miles near the middle of the Atlantic. Captain 
Trott, of the Minia, who has won great fame for his skill 
and ingenuity in cable matters, recently picked up the 
French cable one hundred and eighty miles off St. Pierre, 
and in four hours from the time the grapnel was let go 
had the cable spliced and in working condition. The 
spKcmg is a work of great delicacy and skill, and when 



112 BY-iVAYS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

accomplished by trained fingers the spliced part can 
scarcely be distinguished from the main cord. So rapid 
has been the improvement in perfecting the modern cable, 
that the resistance to the electric current has been re- 
duced to one quarter what it was twenty years ago, while 
the duplex system of sending and receiving messages 
doubles the capacity of every new cable that is laid. The 
working life of the modern cable is about thirteen 
years. 

The work in the operating-room at Heart's Content 
has brought out a number of curious facts about cables 
and cable-operating. For instance, New York City sends 
and receives about two thirds of all the cable business of 
the United States. Philadelphia comes next, then Chi- 
cago ; while some of the smaller Southern cities, with 
their messages relating to cotton sales, outrank large 
Northern cities like Boston, Baltimore, St. Louis, or Cin- 
cinnati. It amazes the telegraphers at the cable station 
to tell them of the importance of places like New Haven, 
Albany, Troy, or Buffalo, from which the cable business 
is so small that at Heart's Content they are supposed 
to be little towns. The regular price of a message at the 
time of this writing is fifty cents a word. Yet, a few 
years ago, when competition reduced the rate to twelve 
cents, the increase in the number of cable messages was 
relatively very small. As the competition was compara- 
tively brief, however, the test of cheap rates could scarce- 
ly be called a fair one. As proving the importance of 



HEART'S CONTENT AND OCEAN CABLES. 1 13 

choosing steady men in cable work, the example is cited 
of a subordinate at Valentia charged with the duty of 
making certain complex connections with the wires there. 
One day he became intoxicated, and, as no one knew the 
intricate connections, communication between two conti- 
nents was well-nigh stopped for a large part of a day 
until a drunkard could recover from his spree. 

There is a side half romantic, half weird to the life of 
the telegraphers shut in their workroom at Heart's Con- 
tent. Day and night the messages of two continents pass 
thither, make their brief stay, then flash again their mean- 
ing to souls far distant on the old or new hemisphere. In 
storm and tempest, 'mid winter snows and summer blos- 
soms, these men, working often almost within earshot of 
the crash of Arctic bergs, interpret the gossamer charac- 
ters traced in rise and fall along the mystic tape. The 
knell of death, the wail of sorrow, the story of fortunes 
made or lost, the tale of wreck by land or sea, the crises 
of statesmen, the record of crime, the cry of battle, are all 
registered in the tiny line which, passing the sun in 
his course, makes two continents one in their knowledge 
of things done and to be. 



DEEP FISHING IN TROPIC SEAS. 

NOTHING excites more the wonder and delight of 
the winter tourist to the Bahamas than the pellucid 
clearness of the local ocean waters. A few hours after 
leaving the Gulf Stream on the southward voyage the 
change begins. The blacker depths of the ocean are 
there left behind and the soundings of the Bahama chan- 
nels are entered. Around in all directions, though for the 
most part too far away to be descried, are the islands of 
the Bahama group, land-locking the waters and stilling 
the waves. But it is not this softening of the temper of 
the sea — albeit agreeable to many voyagers — that attracts 
so much attention, as the beautiful alteration of sea-color. 
The ocean now takes on the hue of a clear spring sky. 
It is not like the dirty green of our Northern marine waters, 
but a dark translucent blue. Near the shore this color 
brightens suddenly into an opalescent tint, quickly, per- 
haps, shifting to black where the bright coral reefs slope off 
to dark weeds. Dipped up in a glass the sharpest eye de- 
tects no speck in this tropical fluid, colorless as the purest 
air. We talk of pure sea-water at Newport, Long Branch, or 
Cape May. But the term becomes a far-fetched metaphor 
after seeing what ocean water is in regions like the Baha- 
mas, where no alluvial sands discolor it, where the coral 
114 



DEEP FISHING IN TROPIC SEAS. 11$ 

debris seems always to sink, and where the sea when calm 
appears to be only a sort of lower stratum of the luminous 
ether above. Where the water is, say, ten feet deep, it 
seems as if one could touch bottom with a cane. The 
steamers, of almost two thousand tons burthen, which 
enter Nassau harbor appear by some magical potency to 
be floating on the sand ; and in the profounder depths of 
sixty or seventy feet the naked eye, discerning the reefs 
apparently some fifteen feet down, is even worse deceived. 
When bathing in this fluid, never even in winter so cold 
as the warmest summer seas of Long Branch, one is 
surprised to find himself over his head in water that seems 
only waist-deep, while the body of a big man is shortened 
by the optical illusion into the proportions of a dwarf. 

Dame Nature, in accomplishing her work in tropical 
climes, always seems to have made the sad mistake of 
doing every thing for the eye. She gives pure air, but it 
Is full of lassitude. She creates a vast range of most lux- 
uriant vegetation, but her trees are small and their fibre 
tender. She begets a huge variety of fruits beautiful to 
look upon, but if we except the orange, lemon, pineapple, 
and banana, they are for the most part insipid and of spe- 
cies which decay so quickly that they are rarely or never 
seen in our Northern markets. In tropical seas her work 
is of the same kind. Her fish seem made to feast the 
esthetic eye rather than the craving stomach. In those 
crystalline waters, where clean living is the necessary 
habit of the finny races, one might expect every fish to at 



Il6 BY. WAYS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

least rival the flavor of the shad, trout, and other dainty 
dwellers of Northern streams. But, instead, every thing 
seems to run to color. The supremest tints of beauty — 
gold, orange, blue, green, and red — are lavished v^rantonly 
on the tropical tribes of the sea. Even fish of Northern 
species when found in the tropics have some added line 
of beauty in gold or crimson. The porgy, for example, is 
one of the fish most abundant in Bahama waters. But in 
the tropics, unlike his Northern kin, he has a scarlet 
mouth and deep lines of gold on his scales. Something 
in the clear water seems to generate these vivid tints, and 
by the same occult power extract all fishy esculence. 
For tropical fish, with one or two exceptions, taste just 
alike. They have a negative, insipid flavor when cooked 
— something half way between fish and cheap beefsteak, — 
and when first caught they smell more like fresh meat 
than fish. Nay, many of these fish are really poisonous. 
There is one well-authenticated local case, that records 
how some passengers on a Bahama-bound schooner caught 
a tropical fish, called the barracuda, a fierce creature, often 
growing to great size, and much resembling in structure 
and habits the fresh-water pickerel. The fish was cooked, 
and every man who ate was seriously poisoned, while one 
of the victims became almost a confirmed invalid in con- 
sequence of that terrible repast. Nevertheless the barra- 
cuda at certain seasons and under particular conditions 
is eaten freely by the Bahama negroes; and it may be seen, 
when sun-dried, for sale in the Nassau markets. Other fish, 



DEEP FISHING IN TROPIC SEAS. H/ 

however, some of them most beautiful specimens, are 
eschewed, and as to some of them most absurd notions as 
to their poisonous qualities prevail among the negro race. 
The squirrel fish, for instance, must never be touched be- 
tween the eyes, for yellow fever is supposed to be certain 
to ensue. 

For fifteen miles along the northern shore of New 
Providence Island, the formation of the sea bottom is 
most singular and interesting. The first mile from the 
shore slopes gently outward until a depth of eighty or 
one hundred feet is reached. Then comes a submarine 
precipice. The coral reef suddenly drops down like a 
cliff, edged with rough rocks and cut by deep fissures, in 
which many an anchor of the poor fisherman has been 
caught and lost. To fish successfully, therefore, a shore 
wind is almost essential, so that the anchor may be cast 
in soundings while the boat " tails " off over the subnia- 
riiie cliff, in whose cracks the fish find refuge from sharks 
and other enemies. To get his sail-boat in exact position 
over this cliff is the Nassau fisherman's highest art. Long 
he scans the water as his craft nears the " edge of the 
ocean," as the dip is locally named. By the change in the 
water-tints he knows every shifting of depth, but in addi- 
tion he must note carefully the direction of wind, the 
water currents, and the probable drag of his four- 
toothed anchor. Then at last comes the order to " drop." 
The rusty flukes go over with a splash ; the long rope 
runs out ten, twenty, thirty fathoms, until the welcome 



1 1 8 BY.JVAYS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

strain shows that the teeth have caught the rock. The 
sails are furled, the little vessel swings to the wind, one of 
the colored crew breaks a big " conch " for bait, dropping 
the bright fragments of shell overboard to attract the fish. 
Then the long double-hooked fish-lines, as large as small 
ropes and furnished with a sinker like a plummet, are 
dropped over, and the sport begins. 

Fishing in the tropics, as in every spot where the writer 
has ever cast his lines, is vested with most acute uncer- 
tainties. Not only most wise in their generation, but 
decidedly whimsical and capricious are these scaly races 
of hot zones. I have cast my baited hook in a school of 
them so thick that it gave dark color to the white coral 
bottom, yet without a suggestion of a nibble. At other 
times, it is said, every fish rushes madly for the bait as 
though at the point of starvation, and they are hauled up 
two at a time, until the fisherman's rasped fingers can en- 
dure the pain no longer. In some respects, too, this is the 
merest mockery of sport. To pull up hand over hand a 
hundred and fifty feet of mimic rope ; to barely feel the 
struggles of a four-pound fish at the other end, so tense is 
the strain of the line with its huge sinker ; to find the 
captive when he reaches the surface so exhausted by his 
upward trip that he is scarcely as gamesome as so many 
pounds of floating wood ; and to wait several minutes 
before even the heavy lead can take the line to the needed 
depth, — all this has its smack of the ridiculous for the 
sportsman who has pulled in a ten-pound bluefish off 



DEEP FISHING IN TROPIC SEAS. II9 

Barnegat, or played an Adirondack trout on his eight- 
ounce rod. But, on the other hand, tropical fishing has 
special charms and novelties of its own. The immense 
variety and wonderful shapes and colors of the fish make 
one watch with eager excitement for each new specimen 
hauled over the rail. It may be the tropical turbot, with 
blue-and-gold markings, and his dorsal fin six inches long ; 
or the pine, scarlet-red, dotted with black spots ; the 
rockfish, variegated as the rainbow ; the hog-fish, with 
teeth counterfeiting tusks, and a snout opening like a 
telescope ; the crimson snapper, the silvery margate, the 
red-mottled grouper, and twenty other species might be 
named to fill out a list, none of which would lack strange 
attributes of color or form. I have known a friend, after 
a few hours' sport, bring in no less than nineteen different 
varieties of fish, which fairly transfigured the interior of 
the boat with their mass of radiant hues. The " water- 
glass," so-called, also adds a unique attraction to this deep- 
water fishing. It is simply a window-pane set into a box 
which is fitted with handles. Placed on the waves, it 
makes a smooth-water surface in contact with the glass, 
through which the trained eye of the negro mariner looks 
down to incredible depths. Often his " Look out dere, 
massa, dere 's a big porgy at yer hook ! " will signal a bite, 
and be followed presently by the coming of the identical 
fish over the rail. It smacks of the strange and supernat- 
ural, this prediction of fishy doings a hundred feet down in 
the brine. 



I20 BY.H^AYS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

Or take the glass yourself, if momentarily tired of the 
sport, and a little practice will show you a fresh realm of 
wonders — the deep bottom, with its rocks, weeds, and 
sands ; the fish moving here and there ; the graceful curve 
of the long fiish-llnes, as they taper away to nothingness far 
below ; and every now and then an upward gleam of white- 
ness as a companion draws up a new victim, whose 
struggles can be marked fully a minute before it is 
dropped, gasping on the boards. 

A volume could be written about the habits and traits 
of the tropical sharks. In the teeming fish-life of these 
tepid waters they find abundant food, all the more easily 
captured because of the transparency of the sea. It fol- 
lows that there is an enormous development of shark-life, 
both as to number and species, as compared with more 
temperate ocean climes. In his relations with the fisher- 
man the shark is a vile marplot. You may be gleefully 
hauling in fish after fish, and congratulating yourself on 
an hour or two of sport. Suddenly, just as you have 
started a four-pounder upward, you see a gleaming white 
flash. Pull rapidly as you will, but you will pull in vain. 
Thirty feet more of line, it may be, are drawn in, when 
the hook seems to strike a rock. Perhaps the check is but 
momentary ; then on drawing in you find only the head 
of a handsome fish whose body has gone into Mr. Shark's 
maw. But more likely you have put too much strain upon 
the line, and in that case the shark, fearing the escape of 
the prey, has bolted hook, fish, and sinker, so that only the 



DEEP FISHING IN TROPIC SEAS. 121 

severed line comes back. The negro fishermen, with the 
aid of their water-glasses, have been able to make a thorough 
study of the habits of these pirates of the deep, and give 
the shark a high character for cunning. As these negroes 
aver, a shark will sometimes follow a boat for a mile until 
it comes to anchor. Then, lying in the shadow of some 
subaqueous rock, so as not to frighten the fish from biting, 
the shrewd fellow will dart out the instant a hooked victim 
begins his ascent. With a hungry shark around, not 
more than one out of three hooked fish ever reaches the 
rail; and there is proportionate and vexatious loss of 
hooks and sinkers. After his novel fishing is ended the 
shark rids himself of these impedimenta by rubbing his 
nose and lips against projecting rocks. Sharks of the 
moderate size of ten or twelve feet may sometimes be 
caught with a rope and huge hook hung to a chain. But 
even then they have a clever way of following up the line, 
turning on the back, and by a side snap of the teeth cut- 
ting the cord as cleanly as with a knife. The larger and 
fiercer species of tropical shark, from twenty-five to thirty 
feet long, have never been caught at Nassau by line, and 
the negroes tell wondrous tales as to the chain hooks and 
huge cords broken in tackling the big fellows. We 
had lately an illustration of their voracity: A negro 
sailor had caught one day an ordinary shark ten feet in 
length and weighing some two hundred and fifty pounds. 
He left the creature over night on a line attached to his 
boat. The next morning only the head was found. It 



122 BV-fVAYS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

had been severed from the body by a single clean cut just 
behind the gills. As a rule, when once the sharks get 
actively at work around the lines the legitimate sport 
ends for that anchorage in fifteen or twenty minutes, as 
the edible fish fly to the rocks for protection. But some- 
times the fishermen, tying together a bottle and piece of 
iron, drop it down on a cord attached to the boat. The 
rise and fall of the craft on the waves keeps up a constant 
tinkling below, and, as water is a good sound-conductor, 
the sharks flee in terror. A ray of sunlight cast down- 
ward through the water-glass often has a similar effect. 

Manifold are the curious things disclosed in the fish- 
craft of these clear deep waters. A few moments after a 
fish has lain on the boat's bottom you will see its abdomen 
enormously distended. Examine it more closely, and you 
will find the wind bladder so swollen that it protrudes far 
into the mouth. The simple explanation is that the 
bladder has expanded from the relaxing of the pressure 
to which it was adjusted by nature at thirty fathoms of 
depth. Place this fish while still alive on the water, and 
it will scarcely stir, much less swim downward. But prick 
the abdomen with a large pin and the air rushes out, the 
internal mechanism readjusts itself, and the fish darts 
away. In several species of fish this distension ensues in- 
stantly, after they are pulled within thirty or forty feet of 
the surface. Then, if they become unhooked, they 
struggle vainly to go downward, and at last float to the 
surface to die. Among the unique local methods of 



DEEP FISHING IN TROPIC SEAS. 1 23 

fishing is that used by the negroes to take the Jewfish, a 
handsome many-colored species often growing to a length 
of several feet, and with a fatal habit of lying sluggishly 
on shallow bottoms as if asleep. The negro divers, who 
rival the fish in their swimming powers under water, take 
down a hook hung to a cord, approach the Jewfish from 
behind, and slip the hook under its nose. A sudden jerk 
from the confederate fisherman using his water-glass 
above does the rest, and the Jewfish goes to his death. 
Apocryphal as the story sounds it is but a second-rate 
marvel amid the genuine fishy wonders to be found with- 
out number in the bright waters of the tropic zone. 



SHADOWS IN CUBA. 

CUBA is a Spanish Ireland," is a sentence by which, 
after a very brief trip through the island, its po- 
litical, social, and economic conditions can be summarized. 
Of course some flaws may be detected in the analogy, but 
in essential points it holds good. Within the bounds 
of the " Gem of the Antilles," is a fierce war of races of a 
genuine Hibernian type. There, too, among the lower 
classes, are the squalor, misery, and destitution that im- 
press the eye so painfully in Mayo or Tipperary. With a 
little more mud and a little less thatch-work the likeness 
between the hut of the Cuban freedman and the cabin of 
the Irish peasant would be complete. Finally and most 
solemn of all is the terrible disparity to be seen in . Cuba 
between the natural resources of the island and the physical 
condition of the people. The beauty of its landscapes, the 
fertility of its soils, its vast productiveness, its fine harbors, 
its clear rivers, are a perfect revelation to the American 
visitor. Nature seems to have done every thing to make 
the island, man every thing to unmake it. The Gem of 
the Antilles is literally an Irish emerald with a tropical 
setting. 

Before you even reach Cuba you are confronted by 
those evidences of backwardness and semi-barbarism that 
124 



SHADOWS IN CUBA. 1 2$ 

increase by a huge ratio after landing. You are bound, 
we will suppose, to Matanzas, a city of some thirty 
thousand inhabitants, with a deep capacious harbor open- 
ing directly on the ocean, and for that reason dangerous to 
approach by night. Yet this harbor, in which not very 
long ago I counted fifty sail of anchored vessels, has 
no light-house. There is a harbor light at Havana, and 
one at another Cuban port ; but these two lights are all 
that can be found on the Cuban coast-line of two thou- 
sand miles. Once within the harbor the ordeal of Custom- 
house vexations begins. The steamer that bears you has 
entered port at eight o'clock in the morning, and must 
wait the coming of the surly Custom-house officers. One 
hour, two hours, three hours pass. The impatient pas- 
sengers stamp the deck with maledictions deep and pointed. 
At last, in the far distance, the Custom-house barge, a lazy 
craft of the gondola species is sighted. Her officers know 
that the steamer's voyagers are waiting ; but before the 
mediaeval craft heads to the steamer she must visit half a 
dozen sloops and schooners, with fifteen or twenty min- 
utes' stay at each. Then your passport must be surren- 
dered, to be sought out with fresh bother on shore. You 
land in a cranky row-boat — there are no ship wharves at 
Matanzas — and must wait once again the examination of 
baggage , and finally, after having undergone treatment 
that could not have been much worse if you were a filli- 
buster conspiring against the peace of his Spanish Maj- 
esty's Cuban dominions, you reach your hotel. These 



126 BY-WAYS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

abominable Custom-house practices at Matanzas have 
been officially brought to the notice of the higher Cuban 
authorities by the steam-ship companies, but thus far with- 
out the slightest efifect. 

Matanzas itself is a fair specimen of that dry-rot which, 
under Spanish rule, seems to have fallen on the whole 
island. The city, evidently old — for decay only comes with 
age, — is probably as dilapidated a place as can be found 
on the continent. The Custom-house wharf, with its rot- 
ted floors, broken timbers, and tottering foundations, sat- 
irizes the really important commerce of the port. The 
ordinary buildings of the city, outside of a few of the 
better class of residences and mercantile houses, are 
musty, battered, and forlorn. Business drifts rather than 
moves through its streets, and the old esplanade, weed- 
grown, rough, and decorated with shattered remnants of 
statuary, mocks its ancient splendor. Take a volante and 
drive through the valley that trends from inland down to 
the city. Within a pistol-shot of the suburbs the chief 
road becomes a chaos of rocks, deep ruts, and mud holes. 
An unworn drive through a New England cow-pasture 
would be a boulevard in comparison with this pathway, 
which they call a " good " road in Matanzas. But proceed 
a little farther on. The valley now opens into a beautiful 
expanse of fertile land. There is a square mile of this 
level country within a rifle-shot of a city of thirty thou- 
sand people, yet not a square rod is improved or under cul- 
tivation. That land at twice the distance from a Yankee 



SHADOWS IN- CUBA. 12/ 

city would fetch its thousands an acre ; at Matanzas it can 
be bought for a song. 

An inquiry as to the causes of this backwardness always 
brings out the reply : " Taxation," " Do you know," 
said a prominent Cuban citizen of Matanzas in conversa- 
tion recently, " why that plot of land to which you refer 
is not improved ? It is because, if any one improved it, 
the increased taxes would eat it up." All through Cuba 
this grievous taxation is the burden of complaint. The 
whole island groans under its load of direct and indirect 
imposts. They take so many forms that, after considera- 
ble effort, it is impossible to reach any just estimate of 
the total tax under which the ordinary property- 
owner labors. There are taxes on imports and taxes on 
exports — for instance, five dollars on every cask of sugar 
that leaves the country, — taxes on sales, taxes on legacies, 
taxes on rents. To enumerate the petty fees and per- 
quisites which hang on the system, like fungi on a rotten 
log, would take a volume. But let an instance speak for 
all. A young Cuban friend was to be married during the 
writer's visit to the island, and was enduring the tedious 
civic and ecclesiastical formalities preliminary to the cere- 
mony. He asserted that the essential legal fees — for cer- 
tificate, notice of marriage, and so on — would amount to 
one hundred dollars in paper money, the equivalent of 
fifty dollars in our American currency. The legal fee of 
the priest alone was fifty dollars, and it was sure to be 
rigidly exacted. 



128 BV-IVAYS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

The nature and spirit of this wretched scheme of extor- 
tionate public fees may be inferred from the passport sys- 
tem, which is still in full force at the Cuban ports. Every 
American who goes to Cuba must get a passport at a total 
cost of eleven dollars in our country. But at Nassau, an 
English port, the Spanish Consul sells them for four 
dollars, and asks no questions of the applicant, except one 
or two purely formal ones. There is an American Consul 
at Nassau, but, curiously enough, the American visitor 
goes to the Spanish ofificial for his passport, and that 
functionary eagerly questions the pursers of incoming 
American steamers as to the number of Cuba-bound 
visitors needing the documents. Practically, of course, 
this passport system is a mere farce regarded as an inter- 
national precaution. But it serves to tax strangers who 
go to Cuba to spend money, and therefore the extortion 
is kept up. A curious contact it is with New-World bar- 
barism when the visitor in a country close to our shores 
finds that he must get a passport, must have it vised 
at the Cuban port of entry, vis^d again at the port of 
departure before he can leave the island, and have to 
pay a fee every time the document is scrutinized. 

Ofificial corruption is apparently rampant all through 
the Cuban civil service. Said a Cuban tax-payer to the 
writer recently : " It would be bad enough to have to 
pay the awful taxes we do, but it is doubly sickening to 
have to pay those taxes and know that an immense pro- 
portion is coolly pocketed by the Spanish officials." 



SHADOWS IN CUBA. 1 29 

This same gentleman showed me a local tax bill for 
his house fully paid and receipted. He then pulled out 
two later unreceipted bills covering exactly the same 
period, but with "penalty" taxes— for delay— added. 
The conclusion was irresistible that the first tax had been 
stolen without entering it on the books at the Tax-office. 
There was the best authority for a case where a planter who 
had gone up to pay taxes on a plantation sold for three 
hundred thousand dollars had been invited by the officer 
to fix the amount at half the sum and " divide " the 
tax on the balance. Indeed, it is perfectly amazing to 
find how universally accepted is the notion of deep-seated 
and general official swindling. Some little incidents 
throw a side-light on the' evil. For instance, the regular 
fee is twenty-five cents for getting a passport vised at 
Havana before leaving the island. Visit the Government 
office in the city and try the experiment of not offering an 
extra fee. You may wait one, two, three days before the 
passport is handed back. But offer a dollar, and " presto," 
the little instant of work is done and the document re- 
turned. If people who ought to know — American resi- 
dents and respectable Cubans— can be half believed, the 
degree of public swindling would be positively ludi- 
crous, could crime ever be made funny. They aver 
that Cuban offices are regularly bartered in Spain to men 
who come over as civic pirates to prey on the island. I 
have heard of the case of one Customs officer who came 
from Spain after paying there ten thousand dollars for his 



1 30 BV- WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

place. In two months, as the story goes, he was removed, 
that his position might be sold over again. " Never 
mind," said he, " in those two months I made twenty- 
thousand dollars." No doubt many of these stories are 
exaggerated or fictitious ; but if every one of them were a 
lie, the undoubted and palpable fact that every one be- 
lieves them seems enough to sap the confidence and 
energies of a sturdier race than is found in Cuba. 

The vices of the Spanish ofifice-holding class are reflected 
deeply on those lower orders with whom the stranger has 
to deal. Of all the places in the world prolific in petty 
swindles Havana takes the palm. The hucksters, money- 
changers, hotel interpreters, and everybody of the genus, 
cheat with a coolness and a hardihood that smack of 
genius, and, when detected, calmly lower their price, 
smiling as at a joke. They have easy scope for fraud in 
the currencies of the island, which are enough to puzzle 
more experienced brains than the tourist's. Paper money 
(depreciated in gold at this time fifty per centum and not 
a full legal-tender), Spanish gold, Mexican and American 
coins, greenbacks, all circulate in most puzzling relations 
of value. Many of the paper bills and shinplasters are 
so faded, torn, and dirty that the wildest stretch of fancy 
is required to attribute to them value ; while the com- 
plexities of foreign exchange caused by this hodge-podge 
of hybrid currencies are most absurd and whimsical. 

Between the Cubans proper or Creoles, who are the old 
residents of the island, and the Spaniards there is undying 



SHADOWS IN CUBA. I3I 

hatred. All the public offices of trust and profit are filled 
by these imported Spaniards, who constitute a ruling class 
and bureaucracy of the most pernicious type ; while the 
planter class and most of the property-owners are Cubans. 
Property interests on the one side are thus arrayed against 
a predatory oligarchy of petty official tyrants on the other. 
The bitter feud between the two Spain apparently makes 
no attempt to heal. The Cubans pray for independence, 
for annexation to the United States, for any thing which 
will free them from Spanish dominion ; while the Span- 
iards preserve a disdainful air of authority that is peculiar- 
ly galling to the subject class. The Spaniards, however, 
are in constant fear of an outbreak, and Spain has even 
now twenty thousand troops on the island. Some of the 
local views on the recently closed rebellion give one fresh 
hints on its real character. Said a planter — who was as 
fierce as the rest of his class against Spanish rule — to me 
some time ago : " That rebellion was really little better 
than a series of forays by bandits. Why, half the time 
the rebels and the Spanish troops were in collusion with 
each other to rob the Cuban planters. When a planter 
happened to be beyond reach of one of the hostile parties, it 
would send word to the other that he ' had got something 
left/ and a descent on his property would soon follow. 
The Spaniards robbed and plundered as freely as the 
rebels, and without regard to the political opinions of 
the victim. A favorite Spanish trick was to impress a 
planter's oxen, on the plea that they were needed to haul 



132 BV-^VAVS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

supplies. The next day that planter would find his ani- 
mals on sale in some neighboring town." Nevertheless, 
that rebellion cost Spain at least one hundred million dol- 
lars in hard money and the lives of more than a hundred 
thousand men, most of them victims of yellow fever. To 
have mastered even the rebel guerillas they must have 
been better types of fighters than the thin-legged regi- 
ments of volunteers to be seen in Havana. These mimic 
toy soldiers, with their mincing quick-step and short 
stature, recall a drill of Amazons in a stage spectacle. It 
seems as though a Yankee housewife could spit a whole 
platoon with a bodkin, and one German or British regiment 
annihilate an army. 

The natural and exotic evils in Cuba, serious enough of 
themselves, are further complicated by the reorganization 
of labor systems following the emancipation of the slaves. 
After the year 1884 ^ slaves more than forty years old 
will be free, and by 1890, under the sliding scale of eman- 
cipation adopted, there will be no more slavery on the 
island. Ten years — emancipation began three years ago 
— is a pretty short time for revolutionizing the labor sys- 
tem of a country so languid and inflexible as Cuba, and 
the planters fear most disastrous results. Most of them 
defend the old slave regime, asserting that its evils were 
greatly modified by the legal checks on whipping, while 
any slave with ambition could, by working extra hours, 
purchase his freedom. They look forward with well- 
founded apprehension to the time when a most degraded 



SHADOWS IN- CUBA. I33 

class of negro laborers will be set loose on an island where 
a tropical sun and abundant fruits give the wherewithal 
of subsistence almost without toil. On the subject of 
Chinese laborers, of whom an amazing number are seen 
on the island, the opinions of planters are divided. Some 
planters praise the thrift and industry of the coolies ; 
others declare them slow, weak, and inefficient. The 
truth seems to be that while the Chinaman in Cuba is a 
steady toiler, he is so physically feeble as to be no match for 
the negro slave. As for white labor, it is out of the ques- 
tion under the torrid sun beating down for eight months in 
the year like a celestial trip-hammer. Even now, at the 
^.ater edge of winter, the tourist feels that strange morbid 
languor which seems the necessary curse of tropical races. 
Was it not Emerson who said that the goddess of civic 
liberty had been carved out of snow and ice ? The mind, 
at any rate, constantly reverts to that metaphor when it 
contemplates the long category of civic and economic 
evils which infest Cuba in common with so many other 
countries of the hot zone. 

The climate or some remoter cause inflicts its spell on 
both Cuban physique and character. There are some fine 
specimens of manhood among the planter and professional 
classes, and not a few, who have been educated abroad, 
are most courteous, hospitable, and cultivated men, with 
something of the old Castilian sense of honor. But they 
are physical and mental exceptions to the ordinary Cuban, 
who is thin-flanked, low of stature, hungry-faced, and 



134 BY.fVAYS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

seemingly the victim of perpetual jaundice. How far his 
inveterate smoking breeds his low physique is a pertinent 
question. The speculative passion is most inordinately 
developed among all Cuban classes, and the ticket of the 
Havana lottery is one of the most obvious of its signs. 
These tickets, subdivided into twentieths, worth two 
dollars each, so as to be within reach of the poor, are 
ubiquitous throughout Cuba. Every small dealer, huckster, 
and boot-black has them on sale for a small commission, 
and everybody buys them. The Government, with its 
fortnightly drawings, makes, it is said, twenty per centum 
on all sales ; but the baleful effects of the institution on 
the character of the people seem never to have fallen 
within the governmental purview. 

If one may risk a slight variation of an old figure of 
speech, a visit to Cuba without seeing sugar and sugar- 
cane would be like a trip to Newcastle without finding 
coals. But there is one important difference. The busy 
city on the Tyne is the outlet of a coal region which an 
enterprising race are straining to its utmost capacity of pro- 
duction, while in Cuba it seemed at every step as though 
the soil had hardly been scratched and the vast capacities 
of the island had been almost ignored. The hundred 
million dollars that represents the value of Cuba's annual 
sugar crop in Cuba may seem a great sum, as, in fact, abso- 
lutely it is, and the country may be regarded as the saccha- 
rine centre of the world's trade. But at the best Cuba's 
annual sugar crop is a record of wasted opportunity. No 



SHADOWS IN CUBA. 135 

visitor can see her fertile lands, with only small areas under 
cultivation, her tumble-down plantation dwellings, her 
ruined sugar-mills, without being impressed far more 
deeply with the sense of loss than of gain. 

Nevertheless, seen at a little distance, a Cuban sugar 
farm is a pretty and picturesque sight. It is placed 
usually on some broad stretch of land, rising and drop- 
ping in graceful curves. Pleasant groves of trees, glades 
of woodland, and far mountains, suffused in poetic blue 
haze, lend a lovely general effect to the picture. On one 
of the central curves rises the planter's home. It is often 
a Chinese puzzle of architecture, with no end of project- 
ing points and piazza work, covered with lattices so as to 
let in the breeze while it keeps out the heat, and so lined 
with high colors of red or blue that in the distance it looks 
like a great toy box. A little way from, this dwelling is a 
solid beam, set firmly in masonry and supporting the plan- 
tation bell. Farther away still is the vast mass of mixed- 
up buildings that make up the sugar works, flanked by the 
heaps of crushed dry cane which is used as fuel for the 
boiler. Then grouped at various distances from this plan- 
tation centre are the rough mud and lath houses of the 
negro hands in all stages of architectural decrepitude. 
Beyond, the eye lights on the cane fields, if one may use 
that term for what is rather a vast prairie of cane. It is 
peculiarly hard to do justice to the beauty of one of these 
sugar-cane oceans, its surface breaking into green waves 
under the wind, its solid mass of verdure still further 



136 BY. WAYS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

keeping up the watery effect, and its remoter bounds 
reaching far away until they almost touch the horizon. 
Dot this scene with stately palms lifting their tufted heads 
sixty feet high, with moving figures of horsemen and toil- 
ing negroes, with frameworks of loaded cane drawn by 
four yoked cattle, and the spectacle, seen from a distance 
where detail is lost, charms the eye with its pastoral 
loveliness. 

But with nearer vision, when the outline vanishes and 
details are brought to clearer view, one finds grim realities 
ofJ:hriftlessness. Every thing seems battered, and worn, 
and weather-stained. There is a prevailing air of unthrift 
and carelessness pervading the place. The trim orchards, 
the clean yards, and neat gardens that go with wealth in 
more temperate zones have no place here. The sugar-mill 
is rough and unpainted, its machinery rusty, and the broken 
cane trodden underfoot gives it a barn-yard semblance. 
Even the planter's own dwelling, with its once fiery paint, 
has a washed-out and dilapidated look, which its interior 
often confirms. Worst of all are the half-wrecked homes 
of the negro hands, with the mud falling from yawning 
cracks, the timbers decayed or broken, and their outward 
and inward aspect rivalling the mud huts of squalid Ire- 
land. Among these poor dwellings wander frowsy and 
fierce dogs, half-naked black women, and entirely naked 
black children of both sexes. It seems, looking at one 
of these dusky communities of the Cuban plantation, as 
though some degraded tribe of Central Africa had been 



SHADOWS IN CUBA. 137 

taken up and dumped bodily into one of the dirty Irish 
villages of County Mayo or Galway. Of course there are 
plantations and plantations in Cuba ; and to many of the 
better class, no doubt, this description does injustice. 
But in the large majority of those I have seen most of 
its salient points will be recognized. 

The sugar-cane, which supplies the great Cuban staple 
of export, produces no natural seed, but is propagated 
from cuttings placed in shallow trenches through the fields, 
two or three feet apart. The young plants spring from 
the joints of the buried cane, and continue thus to grow 
for several years without new plantings, somewhat after 
the manner of the asparagus of our Northern climes. But 
each year the growth becomes inferior, until the planting 
has at last to be renewed. Though at first having to be 
weeded, while the stalk is tender, the cane is soon 
left to itself when once it begins to shade the soil so as to 
prevent the growth of obstructive plants. Most curious of 
all is the change that ensues as soon as the cane begins to 
ripen at its lower joints. Then the long, sword-like leaves 
that surround the lower part of the stalk loosen one by 
one. Finally they drop ofT, and as joint after joint soft- 
ens the dry leaves make a tangled thick mattress on the 
ground, covering thousands of acres and highly inflamma- 
ble. Readers of this volume will many of them recall the 
common reports telegraphed during the late Cuban rebell- 
ion of the immense destruction caused by firing the sugar 
plantations. The explanation is to be found in the ease 



138 BV-fVAYS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

with which a whole sugar crop can be set in flames by a 
touch of the match to this jungle of dry leaves that under- 
lies and penetrates the standing cane. Fire is the Cuban 
planter's nightmare. A careless toss of a half-burned 
cigarette, a spark from a negro's cabin, an ignited match, 
may signify the loss of a year's crop and absolute ruin. 
Most dangerous of all, a revengeful negro has it in his 
power often to inflict a loss of tens of thousands of dol- 
lars on his employer. There is one clever device which 
the negro uses to fire plantations, and at the same time 
prove an alibi. He takes a light box, with a candle set 
within it. Equipped with this and a bunch of matches, 
he crawls to the centre of a sugar-cane tract. He then 
so fixes the candle that it must burn through the box 
before the flame can reach the matted cane leaves. A 
touch of the match does the rest, and the fugitive has 
time to escape and appear among the working hands long 
before the distant smoke and spreading flames warn the 
planter of the impending calamity. "A sugar crop has to 
be watched like a baby," said a Cuban planter recently, 
speaking of cane culture. If danger is apprehended, the 
watchers guard it at every point, and short shrift is given 
the black man once caught in the incendiary act. If he 
reaches the courts, his chances are far better than those 
given him by the quick bullet of the guard. 

Outside of this peril of fire, sugar culture is not more 
precarious than other agricultural industries. But it ex- 
hausts the soil rapidly, so that its fertility needs constant 



SHADOWS IN CUBA. 139 

renewal by manures ; and a plantation of three or four 
thousand acres, with its one or two hundred hands, its 
scores of ox-teams, its costly machinery, sugar-house, 
casks, cultivators, and various appurtenances, calls for a 
vast amount of working capital. On one of these sugar 
farms a few miles from Matanzas, the sugar-mill alone, 
with its improved machinery, cost two hundred thousand 
dollars. Some of the largest planters even go to the ex- 
pense of ramifying the cane tract with narrow-guage rail- 
roads, two or three miles long, to bring the cane economi- 
cally to the crushing mills. 

To explain fully the process of sugar-making would re- 
quire too technical and prosy a narrative to recite here. 
But the methods, for all practical purposes, may be divided 
into two : one, the improved process, producing the better 
grade of " centrifugal " sugar ; the other producing the old- 
process, or " Muscovado," article of commerce. The cane- 
stalks, from four to eight feet long, cut and stripped of 
their leaves, are brought to the mill. Then, strewn on a 
broad belt, working on the principle of an endless chain, 
they are passed between three great rollers laid very close 
together and worked by steam. Thence the thin watery 
fluid, very sweet to the taste and yellowish in hue, passes 
to a succession of boiling-pans or round caldrons, where it is 
boiled down by slow degrees, until the crystallization point 
is reached, much the same as is done with the maple sap of 
our own country. When the last boiling is ended the 
product is a mass of crystallized sugar soaking in molasses. 



I40 B Y- WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

To get rid of the molasses, the old plan, and the one still 
adopted on unimproved Cuban estates, is to pour the mix- 
ture into hogsheads and let the syrup drain off for several 
weeks through the cracks. This produces the Muscovado 
sugar, an article inferior in saccharine strength to the 
'* centrifugal " product. To make the latter the sugar 
and molasses mixture is placed in a huge perforated cylin- 
der, which may be likened to a great sieve. This cylinder 
revolves on an upright axis in another larger cylindrical 
vessel. Whirled then with an enormous number of revo- 
lutions a minute, the liquid is thrown out, leaving the 
sugar crystals dry, and doing in a few minutes, and far 
more effectively, the work of weeks by the Muscovado 
method. The crystals left behind vary in size from a mere 
speck to a small pea. This crude sugar has a burnt-brown 
tint, and tastes much like the rock candy of the confec- 
tioner. The scum that rises during the various boilings, 
the refuse juice and fermented molasses, are treated by dis- 
tillation to make rum. So brief a description as this of . 
sugar-making does not, however, even hint at the skill and 
experience exacted in the process. The sugar-maker has 
to treat the raw juice chemically to prevent fermentation, 
must know to a nicety all the variations of heat in boiling, 
must be able to detect and measure the degrees of crystal- 
lization, and must be versed in a dozen other points only 
acquired by years of experience and acute observation. 

The grains, or, more correctly speaking, crystals of 
crude sugar still remain colored externally by the mo- 



SHADOWS IN CUBA. I4I 

lasses. One of the local methods of whitening them, pro- 
ducing a " refined " article, is to place the sugar in 
inverted conical moulds, with a hole at the lower extrem- 
ity. Then the inverted base of the cone is plastered over 
with a wet mixture of clay and bullock's blood. The 
moisture, percolating through the mass, drips out below, 
and washes the grains clean. When the clay is quite dry 
the sugar is taken from the mould, and is of a cloudy-white 
color, not very attractive to the eye, but with a saccharine 
strength that far surpasses that of the more sightly pure- 
white crystals turned out by our great refineries. These 
fairer products of the northern refinery are partly the 
result of a chemical process of bleaching, and Cubans 
always refer to their milk-white hue with laughing con- 
tempt. Their home-made article, they boast, is not only 
much sweeter, but dissolves completely in both cold and 
hot fluids, while the English and American factory product 
leaves a residuum. 

Americans who have lived in Cuba all agree as to the 
ordinary character of the Cuban sugar-planter. He is 
kindly, hospitable, courteous, and very often an educated 
and refined gentleman. But he is dreadfully improvident 
and wasteful. The fifty thousand dollars or more which 
he may make in a good sugar year is often dissipated in 
Havana before the next year begins. His plantation is 
apt to be loaded with debt, and this, with the stupendous 
taxes that he pays and his persistency in never looking 
ahead, explains the miserable plight in which so many of 



142 B Y- WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

the rich Cuban sugar farms are found at the present time. 
The planter, with his mixture of good and bad traits, is an 
incarnate type of the island as a whole ; for, allow what 
we will for the influence of cHmate on human character, 
it yet remains that Cuba is a natural garden-spot which 
man has made an artificial desert. Misrule and civic vices 
in a hundred monstrous forms have thwarted the gifts 
which Providence has heaped so abundantly on the 
island. Here are thousands of square miles of fertile soil 
prolific in sugar, tobacco, and corn, yet left untilled ; 
mineral regions which might produce precious metals 
abundantly but for the fears of the Spaniards that dis- 
covery would invite American adventurers ; splendid 
forests, where the axe is never heard ; the coast unim- 
proved for commerce, with even the magnificent harbor of 
Havana entirely destitute of wharves ; and every thing 
everywhere under the universal paralysis of taxation. A 
country almost as large as England, and with much vaster 
agricultural gifts, seems relegated to a condition that 
borders close on ruin ; yet the very size of her commerce 
under fearful disadvantage attests what the prosperity of 
the ill-starred country might be under happier rule and 
peopled by a race more sagacious and alert. 



THE BAHAMA SPONGE-FISHERS. 

ON the narrow strait between New Providence 
and Hog Island, forming the harbor of Nassau, 
can always be seen a large fleet of sailing boats, each of 
about eight tons burthen. They are odd, stubby speci- 
mens of water-craft, broad of beam, rising several feet 
from the water-line, and impressing one both with their 
large capacity and sea-worthy quality. On the centre of 
their decks is a low box, half filled with dirt, which serves 
as a marine hearth on which the colored crew cook their 
food ; and the crew themselves may usually be seen on 
deck,' lying around in lazy, picturesque groups. These odd 
craft are the sponge-boats, representing a local industry 
which gives steady employment to five hundred sailing 
vessels and four thousand men. They are owned by ten 
local firms, which export sponges worth three hundred 
thousand dollars every year to all parts of the world. 
Nassau, indeed, is asserted to be at this time the leading 
sponge port of the globe, and without that trade she 
would quickly lapse into what she is not so very far re- 
moved from now— absolute mercantile nothingness. 

Naturalists have wrestled long and bitterly over the 
nature and origin of the sponge. Up to not many years 
ago most of them agreed on classifying it simply as one 

143 



144 BY-fVAYS OF NATURE AND LIFE, 

of the infinite series of submarine vegetables. Later 
scientific opinion, however, sets down the sponge as an 
animal, or rather a bunch of minute animals, of low organ- 
ism, cell-shaped, equipped with a stomach and digestive 
vessels, throwing off from their bodies masses of fecun- 
dated eggs, and developing in combination with each 
other that fibrous mass which ultimately reaches our mar- 
kets as the sponge of commerce. Take one of these masses 
which we call a sponge and examine it more critically. It 
will be found to be a group of small fibrous cells which, 
after ramifying more or less, connect with large round 
apertures penetrating far into the sponge mass. By 
suction, or some more occult process, the sea-water is 
drawn through the smaller cells and their partitions. The 
living organism then takes up from the passing fluid and 
devours the minute algcz, on which it is supposed to feed. 
The water, then, loaded with excrement, pours outward 
in a constant current through the larger orifices. A big 
sponge has therefore been aptly likened to a subaqueous 
city, whose inhabitants take up food from the water that 
passes their doors and discharge the residuum into the 
large round channels which represent the sewers. Take 
the world over, sponges appear in so many species, and 
with so great a diversity of living organisms, that the dis- 
cussion of the whole subject would take us too far into 
hazy battle-fields of science. Suffice it only to say here 
that Haeckel, the famous German naturalist, contends 
that the sponge is one of the early " missing links " and 



THE BAHAMA SPONGE-FISHERS. 1 45 

sheds most luminous scientific light on the remoter 
methods of evolution. So that contemplating one of 
these inert masses of fibre hanging prosaically in the drug 
store, evolutionists may regard it with something of the 
reverential regard due to a protoplasmic ancestor. 

The living sponge, when first taken from the waters of 
the Bahamas, differs almost as much from the commercial 
article as a human body from its own skeleton — for practi- 
cally what reaches the market is partly the skeleton, partly 
the dwelling, of a bunch of sea-organisms. When first 
pulled from the rocks where it grows, the sponge looks 
like a corrugated mass of putty. It is drab in color, ex- 
ceedingly heavy, has a sickening odor, and is suffused by 
stringy mucus which drops from it in long viscous Hnes. 
The external pores are partly closed by a sort of sea-bug 
which finds refuge in them, and must be an annoying in- 
terloper to the sponge-builder ; while often a red sea-worm 
an inch or two in length is found far within the spongy 
fibres, whither it has worked its way. What is the exact 
function of the mucous fluid does not yet appear to be 
clearly settled. But it is certain that when taken from the 
sponge and placed on still bottoms, new sponges are 
propagated from it ; and if two pieces of the same living 
sponge, or of different sponges of the same species, are 
laid side by side on the sea bottom they soon grow to- 
gether. The vitality of the sponge, in fact, coupled with 
the decrease of the supply, suggests that ere many years 
artificial propagation may have to be used. 



146 BY-fVAYS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

The negro sponge-fishers who ply their trade among 
the Bahamas are a race of seamen not too regular in 
habits or morals, and living a sadly monotonous life of 
exposure and privation. Their voyages to the sponge 
fisheries last each for six weeks, during which they live 
crowded on board their craft under conditions of hard- 
ship which in a clime less salubrious would be fatal to 
health and life. The sponge firms " find " for them the 
boats, supplies, and equipment which they use on their six 
weeks' trip. The sponge bottoms most sought at this 
time are on the coral beds at the south side of Eleuthera 
Island, fifty miles east of Nassau. With a good wind the 
fisheries are reached in eight or ten hours from that port. 
Then the real toil begins. Lying on his chest along the 
boat's deck, the fisher with his water-glass — a pane set in 
a box fitted with handles — looks down forty feet into the 
clear depths. With one hand he grasps and sinks a 
slender pole, sometimes forty feet in length, fitted at the 
end with a double hook. The sponge, once discovered, 
the hook is deftly inserted at the rocky base, and by a sud- 
den jerk the sponge is detached to be brought up on 
deck. This curt description of what seems the simple 
work of sponge-fishing gives no idea of the real skill and 
exertion needed. The eye of the fisher has to be trained 
by long experience to peer into the sea and tell the com- 
mercially valuable sponges from those that are worthless. 
He must have a deft hand to control the swaying hook 
forty feet down so as to detach the sponge without a tear. 



THE BAHAMA SPONGE-FISHERS. 1 47 

Above all, while doing this with one hand, he must ma- 
nipulate with the other the water-glass as the waves sway 
it sideways and up or down. The strain on eye and body 
is most severe, to say nothing of the cramped position 
and exposure to wind and wet which first and last make 
almost every sponge-fisher a victim of acute rheumatism. 
Yet with all his arduous toil, a faithful sponge-fisher earns 
not more than fifteen dollars a month besides his living on 
the boat, which barely deserves the name of existence. 

All the Bahama waters abound in sponges of great 
variety, but many of them worthless for the market. 
Those that are good for nothing else are often most beau- 
tiful for curiosities. They take most wondrous and strik- 
ing shapes — now a cup, now an old-fashioned drinking- 
horn, anon a great bunch of mossy, cup-shaped growths, 
and frequently foliated, like the tree-coral. A cup-shaped 
sponge, found some years ago in Bahama waters, and said 
to be the second largest in the world, measured seven 
feet in circumference, and its walls from four to six Inches 
in thickness. Up to two or three years ago the Bahama 
fisheries showed signs of exhaustion, but the discovery of 
the Eleuthera bottoms has proved a godsend to the fish- 
ermen, and is likely to supply the markets for some 
years to come at least. 

Next comes the process of preparing the sponges for 
export. First they are either placed on deck under the 
tropical sun or hung in long festoons from the little ves- 
sel's mast. In either case the heat of the sun in a few 



148 BY- WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

days kills all the living organisms within the fibre and 
loosens them for the next process. Then the sponges are 
dumped into a sort of water-cage made by driving a circle 
of small piles a few inches apart from each other in the 
sand. Through these piles the tide plays violently back 
and forth, washing away from the sponge after a few 
hours the sand, dead animalculse, and other impurities 
with which the mass is clogged. During these operations 
the sponges emit a most fetid and revolting odor, but a 
final washing leaves them with that not unpleasant flavor 
of the sea with which they reach our marts. Usually at 
Nassau, where the bulk of the Bahama sponges seeks 
a market, they undergo no process of purification other 
than has just been described. But sometimes they are 
immersed in a bath of diluted hydrochloric acid, which 
not only bleaches them but dissolves what few impurities 
have been left. After the final drying sponges are as- 
sorted, baled, and then are ready for market. The grades 
and qualities are numberless. There are, besides others, 
the " sheep wool," selling for about one dollar and sev- 
enty-five cents a pound ; the Abaco velvet (so-called from 
its velvety fibre), worth about one dollar and ten cents a 
pound; and the "glove," "yellow," and " grassy " varie- 
ties, all selling as low as fifty cents. Before being baled, 
it should be added, the rougher kinds of sponge are 
trimmed with shears and the big sponges cut in sections, 
each about as large as a cocoa-nut. The test of the best 
sponges is their soft woolly surface under the touch, and 



THE BAHAMA SPONGE-FISHERS. 149 

above all the toughness of the fibres, which can readily 
be ascertained by tearing one or two of them apart. The 
Bahamas, though prolific in sponges, produce few of those 
high qualities, which are used for surgery and other 
delicate work. These come from the Mediterranean Sea, 
where divers bring them up, and some of the finest grades 
have been sold as high as from fifty to one hundred dol- 
lars a pound. 

In some of its broader phases its sponge industry 
gives Nassau some local features of rare novelty. The 
little boats thronging its harbor, the chattering crews, the 
warehouses lining the strand, the " Sponge Exchange," 
where sponges of every grade and shape and size may be 
seen by the thousand, are specialties of the port's com- 
merce not to be found elsewhere in the West Indies, or, 
perhaps, in the world. Sponges cover the wharves, their 
broken and tattered masses float over the harbor, great 
heaps of clippings line the sands, and, cast up by the 
waves, cover the beach far below and above the city. The 
negro driver, at command, will plunge from your pleas- 
ure-boat into the clear waters of the harbor to bring up a 
fresh sponge specimen, and on shore the negro hucksters 
pester the traveller's life with offerings of the staple 
commodity. Everywhere the sponge is as ubiquitous to 
the eye as it is potent in the local mart. 

Side by side with the sponge industry, though of far 
less commercial moment, is the gathering of the conch. 
In the Bahama waters, at a depth of some fifteen feet, this 



ISO BV.PVAYS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

shell-fish, of old represented as the trumpet of the god 
Triton, breeds in great numbers, and, gathered by the 
colored divers, is sold regularly in the Nassau market for 
two cents each. The creature which inhabits the big- 
fluted shell, lined with its brilliant red enamel, is used 
for fish-bait, and more often for human food in the shape 
of very edible fritters. The shells, moreover, are ex- 
ported for ornamenting garden plots, while the tinted lin- 
ing is made into cameos. But most remarkable of all, per- 
haps one conch in a thousand carries within its soft body 
a pearl of great beauty, which commands an immense 
price. These conch pearls are round or oblong in shape, 
some of them as large as a pea and suffused with a wavy 
liquid color of pinkish hue, which changes beautifully as 
the light touches it at different angles. They have sold 
in Nassau for as much as two hundred dollars each, and 
in London have been known to bring a thousand dollars. 
So rare are they, and so well covered in the creature's 
body, that the search for them does not repay the labor ; 
consequently many a pearl of great price has been thrown 
away, many broken in crushing the shell of the creature 
for bait, and not a few never discovered until they reach 
the table completely ruined by the heat of cooking. 
They tell at Nassau of an enterprising but unsuccessful 
Yankee who once tried the experiment of manufacturing 
these pearls, then inserting them in the flesh of the conch, 
and palming them off as genuine in the local market. To 
find one of these splendid gems is the hope and prayer of 



THE BAHAMA SPONGE-FISHERS. 151 

the poor negro's life, as the discovery is not merely un- 
wonted cash in pocket, but is a mighty symbol of good- 
luck. For, like his race everywhere, the Bahama negro is 
superstitious. He sees signs of portent in the markings 
of fish, in the colors of the waters, in the mutterings of 
the wind through the trees. A brackish and at night 
very phosphorescent pond not far from Nassau is his 
peculiar terror, and it is rarely after dark that one of the 
race can be found who will approach what he calls " de 
preposterous [phosphorescent] lake." 



DOWN IN A COAL-MINE. 

TO the traveller through Berks, Lancaster, and the 
adjacent farming counties of Eastern Pennslyvania 
no change can be more abrupt than that which brings him 
to the great anthracite coal region. At first come broad 
areas of beautiful farms cleared and tilled, until one can 
almost believe himself to be in the most highly-favored 
farming lands of England. Neat houses, so small, how- 
ever, that the great Dutch barns seem to dwarf them to 
pigmies ; rich orchards, filled with trees set in geometrical 
lines ; velvety meadows, and furrowed planting grounds, 
all make up a pastoral picture to be rivalled probably by 
no other part of our country. Suddenly, as he travels 
northward, there comes a rude mutation. Mountains and 
steep cliffs, overhung with the chestnut or oak, succeed. 
The streams run black, and touch with their inky stain adja- 
cent rock and tree. The sky is dim with smoke, the very 
air seems surcharged with soot, and the mountains, with 
their bright autumnal tints, or summer verdure, are scar- 
red with dark rents or spotted with the great heaps of coal- 
dirt which commerce has left behind, a grim monument of 
her endless toil and aspiration for gain. 

Of all the many and varied aspects of the coal industry 
and its home, none compares in picturesque quality with 
152 



DOWN IN A COAL-MINE. 153 

these mountains of coal-dirt left by the army of miners 
as their long decades of subterranean toil proceed. For 
every ton of coal that has been extracted probably at 
least a ton and a half of slate or blackened dirt or rocky 
debris of some sort has been mined and discarded, A 
short distance away the heaps look exactly like the coal 
itself, and it is hard to disabuse one's self of the illusion 
that here has been wanton waste and loss. The heaps rise, 
sometimes far as the eye can scan, in every conceivable 
shape and dimension short of lofty mountains. There are 
long ranges, steep cliffs, valleys of black soil which the 
climbing dirt-cars are fast filling in. Sometimes the river 
which traverses a coal valley, swollen by rains, sweeps away 
thousands of tons of this- coal-dirt, depositing it on low 
lands, where it spreads like a sea of pitch. In the Panther 
Valley, not far from Mauch Chunk, is a spot where one of 
these pitchy floods covering a lowland forest has risen 
half way up the tree trunks. The trees, their life crushed 
out by the overlying mass, project in stark and weird 
nakedness, over their inky bed, a wild spectacle of deso- 
lation. Experiment is still doing her best to utilize these 
dirt heaps, of which a large proportion is coal-dust. The 
recent novelty of pressing the better grades into bricks 
to be burned like the ordinary anthracite is said to be 
substantially a failure owing to the great expense. With 
certain kinds of engines driving a strong blast the dirt can 
be burned, but practically the consumption of it seems 
relegated to a remote period when either coal becomes 



I 54 -5 F- IFA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

more costly or industrial processes more perfect than now. 
Many of these great coal heaps have taken fire by what 
is supposed to be spontaneous combustion. In that crisis 
it is hard work to extinguish them, and the fire very often 
extends so as to threaten the adjacent buildings and the 
upper woodwork of the shafts. To avert this danger, as 
well as to get additional room, the nucleus of a large heap 
is usually begun at some distance from the shaft. As the 
heap grows, an inclined railroad is run up its face, on which 
the cars of debris are pulled by steam, then run along a 
level and dumped, the level part of the railway being ex- 
tended as the heap grows. The huge heap, when on fire 
within, burns without smoke, and, except under certain 
atmospheric conditions, it is hard to realize that the out- 
wardly dull and opaque mass is a glowing Inferno within. 
A mile or two from Pottsville is the chief coal shaft of 
that region, owned by the Philadelphia and Reading Coal 
and Iron Company, and named the Pottsville . Shaft. 
Though opened only a few years ago, it is famous 
throughout this whole country for the completeness of its 
equipment, its extraordinary depth, and the knowledge it 
gives of the shape and direction of the coal strata below. 
The perpendicular depth of the shaft is 1,576 feet — the 
deepest coal-mine on this continent. From its vast 
depths, almost a third of a mile down, two hundred cars, 
holding about four tons each, are lifted each day. The 
cars are run upon a platform, and then the whole weight 
of six tons is hoisted at a speed that makes the head 



DOWN IN A COAL-MINE 155 

swim. The time occupied in lifting a full car and at the 
same time letting down an empty one, through a distance 
of about one third of a mile, is a little more than a 
minute and a quarter. A few figures will show that the 
cars pass up and down at the rate of about a mile in four 
minutes, fifteen miles an hour, or, say, the ordinary ve- 
locity of a freight train on a surface track. Standing on 
one of the levels, eleven hundred feet down, the cars 
" snap " past, upward and downward, with a speed so 
great that the human eye scarcely sees them as they pass. 
The Belgian engine which does the lifting is a beautiful 
piece of mechanism, with its drum twenty feet in di- 
ameter, and its wire rope, which has a thickness of two 
inches, coiled around a centre of hemp that allows a nicer 
adjustment of the wires when stretched by use. The 
dramatic figure of the engine-room is the engineer, a man 
picked from his mates for his skill, his steadiness, and so- 
briety. Day after day throughout the year the fate of 
every miner hangs on his nerve and steadfast attention to 
duty. Monotony must not make him careless, the strain 
of responsibility must not weary him, his eye must be 
quick for the signals far down in the mine, his hand must 
be true to its cunning in " slowing up " and " starting," 
on each of which depends his costly machinery or, it may 
be, precious lives. Not often are the idea and ideal 
of duty more visibly incarnated than in this silent, 
thoughtful fellow, his hand on the lever, his restless eye 
on the signals or his machinery, and his whole life of 



156 BY-WAYS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

seemingly dull routine filled with care and accountability. 

The State of Pennsylvania has carefully regulated by 
law the hoisting and lowering of men in coal-mines. Only 
a limited number — ten, I believe — can stand on the plat- 
form at once during its upward and downward journey ; and 
a heavy fine is exacted when the law is violated. How- 
ever, spite of every device of man, fatal accidents are not 
uncommon. Only a short time ago, in the Pottsville 
mine, the platform, when filled with miners, stuck in the 
shaft, and, the wire cable parting, left it hanging across 
the timbers hundreds of feet from the bottom. In this 
case, fortunately, all the men were rescued after a bad 
fright. 

Go now to the shaft and peer over the edge. Be- 
low the vision may penetrate perhaps a hundred feet. 
The square shaft is divided into two parts, each lined with 
heavy beams — one half for the descending, the other for 
the ascending coal-cars. Only a little way down these 
beams begin to fade, then pass into ghosts of timber, 
then finally are lost to view in darkness. This dark- 
ness is so thick that it seems something solid and mate- 
rial, as though a stone dropped upon it would rebound 
with noise. Far down is a white speck just discernible, 
like a little star through a cloud. The speck is a miner's 
lamp, perhaps a quarter of a mile distant. Presently the 
platform comes in sight. The coal-car upon it is run off, 
and with your guide you step upon it, standing upright, 
with no chance for a brace or rest. It goes without com- 



DOWN IN A COAL-MINE. 157 

ment that people of lax nerves should never brave the 
ordeal of a descent in the Pottsville shaft. The machin- 
ery works as smoothly as that of the most improved of 
modern hotel elevators ; but the speed is so terrific that 
one seems falling through air. The knees after a few- 
seconds become weak and tremulous, the ears ring as the 
drums of those organs are forced inward by the air-pres- 
sure, and the eyelids shut involuntarily as the beams of 
the shaft seem to dash upward only a foot or two distant. 
As you leave the light of the upper day the transition to 
darkness is fantastic. The light does not pass into gloom 
in the same fashion as our day merges into night, but 
there is a kind of phosphorescent glow, gradually be- 
coming dimmer and dimmer. Half way down you pass, 
with a roar and sudden crash, the ascending car ; and at 
last, after what seems several minutes, but is only a frac- 
tion of that time, the platform begins to slow up, halts at 
a gate, and through it you step into a crowd of creatures 
with the outward shapes of men, but with the blackened 
faces, the glaring eyes, and wild physiognomies of un- 
earthly fiends. 

In a large mine like this there are often gangways for 
working the coal miles in length. They tell in the coal 
region of a single gangway running for seven miles under- 
ground, so that a miner can descend in the centre of one 
township and ascend near the centre of another. The 
gangways, which are always headed as nearly as possible 
along the coal-seams, are passages about ten feet wide and 



T58 BY-WAYS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

eight feet high. Sometimes they are wet, sometimes 
quite dry. At times they are run through solid rock, but 
more often through loose rock or dirt, which has to be 
stayed by continuous joists of timber. A narrow-guage 
railroad takes the cars from the headings to the foot of 
the shaft. The motive power is the mule, an animal 
whose life in these mines reveals an almost human 
intelligence, if half the stories of the miners are to be 
relied on. Many of these coal-mules live for years in 
the deep blackness of the mine, apparently as healthy 
and strong as their brute brethren in the upper air. 
They are quick to scent the gas which betokens danger, 
and in case of an explosion rival the miners in seeking 
a point of safety. At the Pottsville shaft a story is 
current of one of these animals that drew with its teeth 
the bung from its water-cask so as to get a drink. In 
truth, the lot of these brutes is scarcely worse than that 
of the human toilers who work by their side, breathing 
in the vile coal-dust, half suffocated with the smoke of 
powder, and encountering constant peril from falling 
rocks and explosive gas. Bad as he looks, however, in 
the grime and soot of the gangway, the coal-miner is no 
worse than the ordinary mechanic of the upper regions. 
His cleanliness when not at his work is a marked trait, 
and, as a rule, he takes his bath as punctually as his 
dinner. 

The trip for perhaps half a mile along one of the gang- 
ways to a " heading " where the coal is blasted out is 



DOWN IN A COAL-MINE. I 59 

a strange and solemn journey. The little lamp set in 
your miner's hat barely suffices to make the outer circle 
of solid darkness visible. You tramp stolidly along 
between the railroad tracks in the thick coal-dust, which 
is liT<e sand under the feet. Every now and then moving 
figures in the distance materialize into a train of coal 
cars, drawn by the ubiquitous mule, which crowd you 
close to the rocky wall as they pass. Now and then there 
comes a refreshing gush of air from a side gangway, but 
as a rule the atmosphere is dead, heavy, and sepulchral. 
As the end of the gangway is reached the air is wellnigh 
unbreathable. Powder-smoke and coal-dust enter the 
lungs, and it seems as though asphyxia were only a matter 
of moments. Close by the heading a human figure lies 
on its back. It is that of a boy not more than ten years 
old, who turns a fan that freshens just a trifle the air for 
the workmen twenty feet farther on. He and the other 
toilers must breathe for hours each day this fetid, dust- 
laden air, of which only a few moments' experience makes 
the visitor spit black phlegm for half an hour after leaving 
the shaft. At another point you pass a blackened miner 
cleaning thirty or forty lamps covered with wire screens. 
He says " Good-morning," and laughs cheerily when you 
joke him about using that supernal phrase in a habitation 
where the weather is so changeless. The guide explains that 
this is an important functionary whose office is as perilous 
as that of the " King's Taster " in old times. Every morn- 
ing before the miners go to work he must explore all the 



l6o BY-JVAVS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

new nooks and crannies of the mines for the deadly gas. 
He knows the presence of the noxious vapor by the 
increased blaze of his Davy lamp, by the smell, and by 
the peculiar chill which is one of the qualities of the gas 
when it rushes out into the gangway. 

The miners who labor seven or eight hours a day in this 
pit of horrors work usually by the car-load, and earn on 
an average not more than two dollars a day. Unhealthy 
as their toil must be, they have the advantage of a pretty 
equable temperature, which rarely varies more than ten 
degrees from the open air sixteen hundred feet upward. 
The intense heat at great depths, which we so often hear 
of in connection with the Comstock shafts and some 
English coal-mines, is, it must be remembered, a local and 
not a general phenomenon. 

No visit to a coal-mine is complete without a sight of 
the breaker, whither the coal raised from the shaft is 
transferred to be broken up, the slate or other stones 
picked out, and the lumps sorted into the " pea," " nut," 
" stove," and other sizes in which it reaches our markets. 
The breaker is an immense building, a Chinese puzzle of 
architecture, filled with sets of revolving cylindrical screens, 
between the wires of which the coal crushed by ham- 
mers at the upper story falls out in various sizes. Below 
are huge bins, into which the coal drops, thence to be 
transferred by shutes to the railroad cars that pass 
through still farther below, in the basement of the breaker. 
But all the perfection of the breaker as a piece of commer- 



DOWN IN A COAL-MINE. l6l 

cial mechanism is lost to the visitor in a sight which stirs his 
humanities to their profoundest depths. Opposite each 
of the screens sit three or four boys from seven to twelve 
years old, who pick out the slate from the coal as it slides 
by. The whole great breaker is almost hidden in its cloud 
of coal-dust, which seems thickest just at the place where 
these poor little fellows sit. Here, week after week, these 
sad children toil, breathing in the air that seems more 
than half dust, their stupid monotony of movement as 
they pick out the slate, their piteous eyes staring from the 
black grime that masks the face, and the dull despair that 
marks their whole bearing, all showing how steadily life 
and hope are being crushed out. If Dives, with ruddy- 
faced children round him, in the surfeit of home luxury, 
ever seeks a new incentive to charity, he need only glance 
into his bright coal fire, and reflect that, for its every flash, 
there is cast at the mine a shadow of childhood blasted 
and of young life shattered and wrecked. 



THE BURIED FORESTS OF NEW JERSEY. 

DRAW a straight line eastward from Philadelphia to 
the Atlantic Ocean and it cuts off to the south- 
ward about one third of the State of New Jersey with an 
area of some twenty-five hundred square miles. As a 
whole this part of the State is on its surface sterile and 
monotonous. On the east a wide marsh fringes the ocean 
cut by a system of salt-water sounds and by hundreds of 
tidal channels so intricate and mazy that only the old 
watermen know their ins and outs. The marsh rises west- 
ward into low timber lands succeeded by a long stretch of 
arid soil covered with brushwood and reaching seventy 
miles southward to Cape May. On the Delaware side the 
tract slants down into lowlands and swamps relieved only 
by the rich soils and neat farms of Salem County. Prob- 
ably three fourths of the whole region is uncultivated, and 
even along the railroads the outlook is sombre and barren. 
But the harsh surface above has a redeeming quality be- 
low. In geological interest it is matched probably by no 
region this side of the Bad Lands of the Yellowstone. 
Its marl beds and its alluvial deposits generally teem with 
signs which mark immense changes of elevation, strata, or 
soil, and it is peculiarly rich in fossils, of both marine and 
land types. But none of the geological features are more 
162 



THE BURIED FORESTS OF NEW JERSEY. 1 63 

instructive and strange than the great cedar swamps of 
which the town of Dennisville, in Cape May County, is 
the centre and, in a commercial sense, the product. 

The traveller to Dennisville leaves the cars and a crowd 
of gay Cape May pleasure-seekers at Woodbine, a little 
station on the West Jersey Railroad. A four-mile ride 
through dense underbrush, clouded by mosquitoes of vast 
penetration and blue-headed horse-flies as big as bumble- 
bees, will bring him to his journey's end. He will find 
Dennisville a sprawling, dingy township of three thousand 
inhabitants, with its central group of houses on a cause- 
way between two great swamps. The wet lands around 
are covered partly by solid growths of white cedar, partly 
by thick water-weeds, and partly by stumps and fallen logs 
of immense size. These are only the surface indications 
of the wealth below. The swamps covering ten square 
miles are underlaid by sunken forests which grew hundreds 
and thousands of years ago. The seeming worse than 
barren wastes, for which the sharpest of Yankee farmers 
would deem fifty cents an acre a swindling price, have 
been worth by the acre their hundreds of dollars. They 
have turned their own desolation into a hive of industry, 
built up a lively village, and made an addition, as legiti- 
mate as it is unique, to the wealth of the country. 

The huge trees which lie under the swamp to unknown 
depths are of the white-cedar variety, an evergreen, 
known scientifically as the Cupressus Thyoides, They 
grew years ago in the fresh water, which is necessary for 



164 BY-WAYS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

their sustenance, and when, in time, either by a subsidence 
of the land or a rise of the seas, the salt water reached 
them, they died in great numbers. But many of them, 
ere they died, fell over as living trees and were covered 
slowly by the deposits of muck and peat which fill the 
swamp. These trees that fell over by the roots, and 
known as *' windfalls " to distinguish them from the 
" break-downs," are the ones most sought for commercial 
uses, and they are found and worked as follows : The log- 
digger enters the swamp with a sharpened iron rod. He 
probes in the soft soil until he strikes a tree, probably two 
or three feet below the surface. In a few minutes he 
finds the length of the trunk, how much still remains 
firm wood, and at what place the first knots, which will 
stop the straight " split " necessary for shingles, begin. 
Still using his prod like the divining-rod of a magician, he 
manages to secure a chip, and by the smell knows whether 
the tree is a windfall or break-down. Then he inserts in 
the mud a saw like that used by ice-cutters, and saws 
through the roots and muck until the log is reached. The 
top and roots are thus sawed off, a ditch dug over the tree, 
the trunk loosened, and soon the great stick, sometimes 
five or six feet thick, rises and floats on the water, which 
quickly fills the ditch almost to the surface. The log is 
next sawed into lengths two feet long, which are split by 
hand and worked into shingles as well as into staves used 
for pails and tubs. The wood has a coarse grain which 
splits as straight as an arrow. The shingles made from it 



THE BURIED FORESTS OF NEW JERSEY. 1 65 

last for sixty to seventy years, are eagerly sought for by 
builders in Southern New Jersey, and command in the mar- 
ket a much higher price than the ordinary shingles made of 
pine or chestnut which last for roofing usually not more 
than twenty or twenty-five years. In color the wood of the 
white cedar is a delicate pink, and it has a strong flavor, 
resembling that of the red cedar used in making lead 
pencils. The trees once fairly buried under the swamp 
never become water-logged, as is shown by their floating 
in the ditches as soon as they are pried up, and, what is 
more singular, as soon as they rise they turn invariably 
with their under sides uppermost. These two facts are 
mysteries which science has thus far left so. The men 
who dig the logs up and' split them earn their money. 
The work is hard, requiring, besides lusty manual labor, 
skill and experience, the swamps are soft and treacherous, 
no machinery can be used, and long stretches of mud and 
water must be covered with boughs or bark before the 
shingles can reach the village and civilization. 

The number of the trees which lie below the surface of 
the ten square miles of swamp is almost countless. In 
many places the probe will be sunk many times before it 
fails to strike a log. As the workmen only dig for logs 
near the surface, and none but the best trees are selected, 
it is certain that only a small fraction of the logs have 
been exhumed since 18 12, when the industry first sprang 
up. The sunken forests lie in all shapes. Sometimes the 
trees are found parallel, as though a wind blowing from 



1 66 BV-IFAVS OF ATA TURE AND LIFE. 

one quarter had felled them. But usually they lie point- 
ing in every direction, and when, as occasionally happens, 
the wet soil sinks or dries, the mighty trunks are seen 
piled upon each other as in a Maine log-jam. What are 
seen, too, are but the uppermost strata of piles on piles 
unseen below. One or two evidences may be cited to 
show not only the great depth but the wide extension of 
the forest beyond the limits of the swamp. Down near 
the tide-waters of the Delaware, seven miles away, where 
no surface indications appear, a white-cedar log was found 
some years ago at the depth of twelve feet. At Cape 
May, twenty miles distant, the tools of workmen digging 
an artesian well were stopped twenty feet down by a big 
cedar log which, it was thought, would discolor and defile 
the water if the work proceeded. In 1873 the City 
Council of Cape May ordered that an artesian well should 
be dug to supply the city reservoir with water. At the 
depth of eighty-seven feet, after the tools had penetrated 
half a dozen strata of gravel, sand, or hard clay, an alluvial 
deposit was reached exactly like that in which lie the 
cedars at Dennisville. In it was struck a solid log, four 
feet in diameter, which was bored through, and specimens 
brought to the surface. In digging an artesian well at 
the Columbia House, Cape May, some years ago, pieces 
of well-preserved wood were found at the depth of ninety- 
two feet. 

Perhaps the most remarkable of all the phenomena re- 
lating to the subterranean woods is the singular preserva- 



THE BURIED FORESTS OF NEW JERSEY. 1 6/ 

tion of the logs, whose fibre is as clean and smooth as 
when their green tops, a hundred and fifty feet above the 
swamp, rustled in the breeze long eons ago. Doctor 
Maurice Beesley, for many years the patriarchal Galen of 
Dennisville, now gone to his reward, who made the 
sunken forests a special study, believed that the trees, as 
soon as they were covered by the soil of the swamps, be- 
came hermetically sealed, and that they will remain pre- 
served as long as the world lasts and the swamp soil still 
surrounds them. If this theory be tested, however, it 
seems strange that wood placed at great depths in ordi- 
nary soils and covered closely from the air should not be 
similarly preserved. We have wooded swamps in New 
York State as soft and deep as those at Dennisville, but 
no sunken forests. It seems more credible that there is 
some subtle and unknown quality, either of the amber- 
colored water of the Dennisville swamps or of the pecul- 
iar alluvial deposit, which accounts for the phenomenon. 
It is a well-known fact also that in certain peat formations 
of Ireland human bodies can be preserved for many 
years without losing their rotundity and freshness. Per- 
haps the analogy applies to the big archaic trees of 
Dennisville. 

The age of the sunken trees opens a long and obscure 
vista for research. The age of a single tree is readily 
found by counting its rings. Doctor Beesley thus counted 
ten hundred and eighty rings of a white-cedar stump, rep- 
resenting an age of the same number of years. But this 



l68 B Y- WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

stump was only five feet in diameter, while some of the 
trees have a diameter of seven feet. The rings near the 
centre are perhaps three eighths of an inch apart, while 
toward the circumference they are so crowded that they 
must be counted with the microscope ; so that the ratio 
of seven to five cannot be used to find the longevity of 
a seven-foot cedar which probably lived some two thou- 
sand years before it fell. The absolute age of the under- 
ground logs — that is, the time that has elapsed since they 
sprouted — is ascertained only by approximations. Doctor 
Beesley, however, made some valuable and suggestive in- 
vestigations of the subject. In one case he found a tree 
six feet through and about the same number of feet un- 
derground. This trunk was accidentally discovered by 
workmen who had exhumed a smaller log above it. On 
top of the great log was found a large underground stump 
five feet in diameter, and a smaller stump was superim- 
posed on the larger one. As the tree of the larger stump 
could not have begun to grow before the large tree-trunk 
fell, and the upper stump belonged to a tree that germi- 
nated on the stump underneath, by counting the rings of 
the stumps — or the rings of trees of the same size — and 
also the rings of the underlying tree, the minimum age of 
the latter was ascertained. It was twenty-one hundred 
and fifty years. But counting the age of the overlying 
soil, and also of a covered tree which lay over the upper 
stump, the doctor concluded that the big tree underneath 
all had germinated thirty-one hundred and fifty years ago. 



THE BURIED FORESTS OF NEW JERSEY. 1 69 

Another test the doctor applied in the following manner : 
He found half covered in a cedar swamp a log with the 
ends cut, evidently by human hands. It was found that 
the log had been cut for an adjacent saw-mill which was 
running about one hundred years ago. Old citizens of 
Dennisville whose memory retraced seventy years of time 
could recall no period when the locality of the cut log had 
been worked either for living or sunken timber. The infer- 
ence, then, was just that the log had been cut for the old 
saw-mill and was at least one hundred years old. Four 
inches of peaty soil had accumulated up the sides of the 
log. Here then was a unit by which the rate of accumu- 
lation of soil over the big trees could be measured. Each 
four inches represented a century's growth of the alluvial 
mud. The bottom of the big tree under the stumps was 
twelve feet beneath the surface of the ground. By divid- 
ing twelve feet or one hundred and forty-four inches by 
four we get thirty-six hundred years as the time since the 
trunk fell over, and a thousand years or more must be 
added to represent the time since it sprouted from its 
little seed, which was about one quarter the size of a buck- 
shot, or, say, one eighth of an inch in diameter. Of 
course all calculations of the foregoing kind are rough 
and inexact, In the case of the tree cited the accumula- 
tion of debris a thousand years ago might have been more 
or less rapid than now, nor can the interval that elapsed 
between the growths of the stumps and the tree be esti- 
mated. But the computation of forty-six hundred years 



I/O BY- WAYS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

for the old tree is probably far below rather than above the 
truth. 

The time is within the easy memory of living man when 
the Dennisville swamps were covered with growing tim- 
ber as large as that which now lies below. An old citizen 
of Cape May, who worked thirty years ago in the swamps, 
remembers felling a tree so large that standing by Its side 
he could barely look over its upper edge. Upon its trunk 
he counted about eleven hundred rings of annular growth. 
What a king among our eastern woods was this great 
cedar ! Let us take a suggestion of the poet Holmes, and 
imagine a strip an inch or two wide cut from its circum- 
ference to the centre. What a chronicle of more than a 
thousand years of mortal vicissitudes, of gory campaigns, 
of shifting dynasties, of ebb and flow of national life, could 
be marked on the arcs of that narrow yardstick ! A single 
pencil dot on the microscopic lines, near the outer edge, 
would stand for our war of 1812. An overlapping mark, 
perhaps a quarter of an inch long, would span the career 
of Napoleon from Toulon to Waterloo. Move a hundred 
years nearer the centre ; another short line covers the 
reigns of Louis the Fourteenth of France, of William 
and Mary, of Queen Anne and the triumphant campaigns 
of Marlborough. The great tree was two thirds grown 
when Luther was summoned to the Diet of Worms, and 
when Columbus, twenty-nine years before, reached our 
continent. It was a stalwart trunk when William the 
Conqueror fought at Hastings, and it was a lusty sapling 



THE BURIED FORESTS OF NEW JERSEY. I/I 

when Charlemagne renewed the Holy Roman Empire. If 
we call this tree old what shall we say of its ancestors a 
few feet down, whose circles include the rise and fall of 
Rome, the coming of the Saviour, the splendor of Athens, 
the luxury of Persia and Babylon ; nay, perhaps, even that 
period of the Scriptural patriarchs which lies on the 
shadowy edge of human history ? Yet even these trees 
are young in comparison with the sylvan monarchs ninety 
feet below the ground at Cape May, under strata, which, 
in turn, are but a film of the earth's crust and a yesterday 
of the world's geological past. 



PETROLIA AND ITS MARVELS. 

THE unequivocally oily city of Bradford, born and 
bred in petroleum, is but little more than three 
hundred miles from New York, and may be reached in a 
journey of twenty hours by rail ; yet it is singular how, as 
soon as one enters it, he feels as if he had come to a new 
and crude zone of American civilization. The spirit with 
which one first views the rough novelties of a Pacific min- 
ing town is kept alive in Bradford at every step. There 
are the rough men, counterparts of the miners, reckless of 
personal appearance, who have each made or missed an 
oily fortune half a dozen times. There are the specula- 
tors, careworn, troubled men who, in these times when 
the market chills rapidly to zero or rises with fever pulse, 
scarcely know from day to day whether to count them- 
selves millionaires or paupers. Then, too, the sprawling 
city, with its hybrid make-up of solid brick, tacked on to 
rough board dwellings, strengthens the impression of 
mushroom growth. Indeed, on the present site of Brad- 
ford in 1877 was a population of only three hundred souls, 
where ten thousand live now. The lands, which have 
since sold for a thousand dollars an acre and a royalty of 
one quarter the gross production of oil, were then beg- 
ging a sale at three or four dollars an acre. Where then 
172 



PETROLIA AND ITS MARVELS. 1 73 

stood a little telegraph shanty, doing for the scattered 
lumbermen a business of five dollars a month, are now a 
dozen offices which take in sometimes for messages as 
much as two thousand dollars a day. Finally, what adds 
more than all else to the sensation of novelty and remote- 
ness is the ubiquitous derrick. Even as an isolated fact 
a derrick has a gaunt and phantom individuality of its 
own. But make the derrick omnipresent ; place derricks, 
sixty feet high, by the dozen, in vacant lots, in gardens, 
on the street corners, in back yards; perch them on 
rugged hill-sides amid the stumps of the trees their struct- 
ure has absorbed ; crown mountain tops with them ; fill 
long vistas of landscape with their skeleton outlines, — 
under these conditions the derrick, if not a novelty singly, 
becomes collectively sufficient to change the whole face 
of civilization. 

But Bradford does not have to be reached before one 
finds out the oily newness of things. Thirty or forty 
miles away the huge tanks of the United Pipe Lines 
begin to fill up the level fields, squatting sometimes over 
whole square miles of area. The air is scented with pe- 
troleum, the water one drinks smacks of the same aro- 
matic fluid, the tank-cars on the railroads multiply, and 
the talk of the male passengers turns on oil prices, oil 
wells, " pumps," flowage, and waste. Travelling down the 
Tuna Valley, and nearing Bradford, the horizon at night 
is luminous with the flashing masses of flame from burn- 
ing gas at the wells, which brighten the hill-sides like great 



174 £y-ivyiys of nature and life. 

bonfires. The city itself is lighted by this gas, burned 
just as it comes from the wells, without any purifying 
process. Householders pay to the local company fifty 
cents a month for each gas-burner, and are at liberty to 
use it night and day. Hotels and other establishments 
consuming the gas in quantity get it at a much cheaper 
rate. It is also very largely utilized in heating, at a price 
of about three dollars a month for each gas-stove. It goes 
without saying that under these conditions consumption 
is most reckless. Street lamps are lighted at mid-day; 
half the shops, though closed to customers, are brilliant 
the night through, and gas is treated with the same noble 
contempt for economy which is felt for air or water. 
This crude gas, however, burns with a vulgar, yellowish 
light, as well as very unsteadily. 

A matter of absorbing but still unsatisfied curiosity is 
the origin of this petroleum or " rock oil," gushing up 
from a thousand or more feet below the surface, and fill- 
ing so large a place in our commerce and industry. Science, 
on many points so precise and positive, gives us here two 
divergent theories. By one hypothesis it is contended 
that the porous sand-rock which underlies the oil regions, 
on an average about a fifth of a mile below the surface, is 
the original source of the oil deposit. In these sand-rock 
strata, so it is said, formed from beds and shoals of rivers, 
there were ages ago deposited vast masses of vegetation. 
These, under certain conditions, produced coal which in 
its chemical constituents much resembles oil ; but under 



PETROLIA AND ITS MARVELS. \^^ 

conditions a little varied they produce oil or "liquid coal," 
which, with gas, is held suspended in the spongy stone, 
and now and then gathers in cavernous magazines, where 
it is held fast under the immense pressure which, when 
relaxed by the oil-digger's drill, drives the fluid to the 
surface in a jet of oil and gas. A second theory asserts 
that the oil is not generated in the sand-rock measures, 
but In the carboniferous shales far below. Here there is 
developed by heat a gas which, forcing its way upward 
through rocky fissures, reaches the colder sand-rock strata, 
where it is condensed into oil, and this oil is held down 
under the harder upper crust of sand-rock until the drill 
gives it exit. This last is the hypothesis most generally 
accepted by scientists of present fame. Whatever the 
origin of petroleum, there can be no doubt of the magni- 
tude of those operations of Nature which — scientifically 
rather than commercially speaking — have been going on 
over an area of some four thousand square miles in Penn- 
sylvania alone, which have led to the sinking of some 
thirty thousand wells, costing on an average at least 
twenty-five hundred dollars each, or seventy-five million 
dollars altogether, and which have been so wantonly 
abused by the improvidence of man that the shadows 
which portend the failure of our coal-oil supply have 
already begun to fall. 

The crude petroleum, as it issues from the Bradford 
wells, might very readily be mistaken for dirty water. It 
is yellow in tint, takes fire like other oils, foams easily 



1/6 BY-WAYS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

when agitated, and seems more viscid and less strong in 
smell than the lower grades of the refined article. If the 
reader will take a small vial, fill it with water, add a little 
sweet oil and yellow dirt, then shake up the compound 
vigorously, he will have — barring the smell — a pretty good 
likeness of the crude rock-oil of the Bradford region. In 
refining about one quarter of the crude petroleum passes 
away, largely into more solid products, which are so far 
utilized now that petroleum may be regarded as a com- 
plex product with every part valuable. Few people ap- 
preciate its place in our export trade. In the fiscal year 
ending in 1881 we shipped to foreign countries petroleum 
and petroleum products worth $40,315,000. It ranks third 
in our export trade, following breadstuffs and cotton, and 
the exports represent only a fraction of the whole product. 
In this connection it may be said that, according to trust- 
worthy estimates in Bradford, the Standard oil monopoly 
which controls the oil trade can produce refined petroleum 
at five cents a gallon. Householders, therefore, can esti- 
mate for themselves, from the local prices they pay to 
their grocers, the intermediate costs and profits. At Brad- 
ford the best refined petroleum sells at ten cents a gallon. 
The machinery used in boring one of the deep oil wells, 
while simple enough in itself, requires nice adjustment 
and skill in operating. First comes the derrick, sixty feet 
high, crowned by a massive pulley. The derrick is a most 
essential part of the mechanism, and its shape and height 
are needed in handling the long rods, piping, casing, and 



PETROLIA AND ITS MARVELS. lyj 

Other fittings, which have to be inserted perpendicularly. 
The borer or drill used is not much different from the 
ordinary hand-drill of the stone-cutters, and the blade is 
in shape exactly the same. But it is of massive size, three 
or four inches across, about four feet long, and weighing 
from one hundred to two hundred pounds. A long solid 
rod, some thirty feet long, three inches in diameter, and 
called the "stem," is screwed on the drill. This stem 
weighs almost a ton, and its weight is the hammer relied 
on for driving the drill through dirt and rock. Next come 
the "jars," two long loose links of hardened iron playing 
along each other about a foot. The object of the jars is 
to raise the drill with a shock, so as to detach it when so 
tightly fixed that a steady pull would break the machinery. 
The upper of the two jars is solidly welded to another 
long rod called the sinker-bar, to the upper end of which, 
in turn, is attached the rope leading up to the derrick 
pulley, and thence to a stationary steam-engine. In boring, 
the stem and drill are raised a foot or two, dropped, then 
raised with a shock by the jars, and the operation repeated. 
If I may hazard a further illustration of the internal boring 
machinery of the well, let the reader link loosely together 
the thumbs and forefingers of his two hands, then bring 
his forearms into a straight line. Conceiving this line to 
be a perpendicular one, the point of one elbow would 
represent the drill-blade, the adjacent forearm and hand 
the stem, the linked fingers the jars, and the other hand 
and forearm the sinker-bar, with the derrick-cord attached 



17 o BY-WAYS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

at a point represented by the second elbow. By remem- 
bering the immense and concentrated weight of the up- 
right drill and stem, the tremendous force of even a short 
fall may be conceived. The drill will bore many feet in a 
single day through solid rock, and a few hours sometimes 
suffice to force it fifty feet through dirt or gravel. When 
the debris accumulates too thickly around the drill, the 
latter is drawn up rapidly. The debris has previously been 
reduced to mud by keeping the drill surrounded by water. 
A sand-pump, not unlike an ordinary syringe, is then let 
down, the mud sucked up, and then the drill sent down 
to begin its pounding anew. Great deftness and experi- 
ence are needed to work the drill without breaking the 
jars or connected machinery, and, in case of accident, there 
are grapples, hooks, knives, and other devices without 
number, to be used in recovering lost drills, cutting the 
rope, and other emergencies, the briefest possible explana- 
tion of which would be too long for the reader's pleasure. 
The exciting moment in boring a well comes when the 
drill is penetrating the upper covering of sand-rock which 
overlies the oil. The force with which the compressed 
gas and petroleum rush upward surpasses conception. 
Drill, jars, and sinker-bar are sometimes shot out along 
with debris, oil, and hissing gas. Sometimes this gas and 
oil take fire, and, in the summer of 1882, one of the wells 
thus ignited burned so fiercely that a number of days 
elapsed before the flames could be extinguished. More 
often the tankage provided is insufficient, and thousands 



PETROLIA AND ITS MARVELS. 1/9 

of barrels escape. Two or three years ago, at the height 
of the oil production of the Bradford region, eight thou- 
sand barrels a day were thus running to waste. But those 
halcyon days of Bradford have gone forever. Although 
nineteen twentieths of the wells sunk in this region 
" struck " oil and flowed freely, most of them now flow 
sluggishly or have to be " pumped " two or three times a 
week. 

" Piping " and " casing," terms substantially identical, 
and meaning the lining of the well with iron pipe several 
inches in interior diameter, supplement the labor of bor- 
ing. The well, if a good-flowing one, does all the rest of 
the work itself, forcing the fluid into the local tanks, 
whence it is distributed into the tanks of the pipe-line 
companies, and is carried from them to the refineries. 
The pipe lines now reach from the oil regions to the sea- 
board, carrying the petroleum over hill and valley, hun- 
dreds of miles to tide-water. 

The elements which for years have made the oil trade 
a synonym of speculation are easily understood. Enor- 
mous variations in supply, the discovery of new fields, the 
sudden exhaustion of productive wells, " corners," monop- 
olies, and all sorts of combinations have made a vast 
gambling game of the whole business. Volumes could 
be written about its ups and downs, and their sequels of 
sudden wealth or poverty. At this time of writing, crude 
oil is selling at the tanks for one dollar and ten cents for 
a barrel of forty-two gallons. A few days ago it reached 



l80 £V- WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

one dollar and thirty-five cents a barrel, and a month or 
two before it was down to fifty cents. It fell in one day 
thirty-five cents a barrel at Bradford, and, to use a local 
phrase in describing that tumble, " big operators broke 
like pipe-stems." With fluctuations so enormous and 
swift, all sober commercial sagacity seems set at naught. 
Speculation, too, seems to make the meat it feeds on. 
Since a recent rise in oil, and within a few weeks, eight 
new oil exchanges have been organized in Northwestern 
Pennsylvania and Western New York, though at the be- 
ginning of the year there were but five altogether in the 
whole country. Some of the local hazards of the business 
and their outcome are simply ludicrous in the light of 
rational business venture. Overlooking Bradford is a 
precipitous hill, or rather mountain, some eight hundred 
feet high. On its crest is a well and derrick. " That 
well," said a citizen of Bradford, speaking of oil specula- 
tion, " was located in New York City on a map which the 
projectors supposed represented level ground near Brad- 
ford. Instead of going down a thousand feet, the drill 
had to bore eighteen hundred before reaching oil-rock. 
Yet the well proved a good one, and the owners blundered 
into a first-rate thing." 

More romantic as well as more adventurous phases of 
speculation are connected with the labors of the persons 
known locally as " oil scouts." The oil scout is a spy 
kept to watch the movements of prospectors who put 
down what are called the test or, in more slang phrase. 



PETROLIA AND ITS MARVELS. l8l 

'* wild-cat " wells in new and undeveloped districts. 
Though most of these test wells are costly failures, yet 
when oil is struck in a new region, and the secret can be 
kept, a great fortune is certain to follow. The discoverer 
can " sell short," or he can buy up the surrounding lands 
and lease or sell them at a profit, as well as avail himself 
of the direct product of his new-found well. His chief 
foes are the scouts, one of whom is employed by almost 
every large oil speculator to keep him posted on " wild- 
cat " discoveries. The work of the scout is arduous and 
uncomfortable. He must lurk around the derrick night 
and day— now hiding behind trees, now crawling to the 
derrick through grass, always watchful for a shot from 
the gun of the derrick guard. He must know how to ply 
a reckless workman with liquor or money, and have a keen 
nostril for the new-found oil or gas escaping from the 
well. His is only one of the many strange types of man- 
kind to be found in this fantastic region of speculation 
and risk. 



A YANKEE TOWN-MEETING. 

TO-DAY, the second of October, eighteen hundred 
and eighty-two, has been town-meeting day in the 
old Yankee town of Litchfield — a day marked for its own 
sake by a red letter in the yearly cycle of a Connecticut 
community, and, besides, not devoid of a certain historical 
dignity. For Connecticut, unlike most of our American 
States, was built up from its towns. From the first town- 
ships new ones were colonized, and, as these made up a 
large enough cluster, the Commonwealth at last was or- 
ganized. So, historically, the Connecticut town was the 
fundamental unit of the body politic — each governing 
itself, and its administration representing the only pure 
democracy since the Athenian era. Coming down to us 
from this illustrious origin, it is not singular that " town- 
meeting day," the first Monday in October, from time 
immemorial, has held fast its place in the habits and 
traditions of our Yankee communities. Its features and 
incidents are still substantially unchanged since the days 
of our fathers ; even the State election, which the icono- 
clastic rulers of Connecticut have placed only a month 
later than town-meeting, has failed to absorb it ; and it 
promises fair to be for a long time what it is now, a day 
when the farmer, his harvest over, seeks with his boys a 
182 



A YANKEE TOWN-MEETING. 1 83 

holiday, over which the duty of the citizen flings at best 
a flimsy mantle of sanctity and excuse. 

Here in Litchfield, an old town with a people mainly 
agricultural, the town-meeting preserves peculiarly its old 
elements and traits. It comes, too, just after most of 
the city visitors have departed, and by its own primitive- 
ness emphasizes a pleasing contrast. For the old village, 
in the centre of the township, has changed — shall we say 
degenerated ? — sadly from the old time. City airs, city 
manners, city exactions and affectations have usurped the 
place of that old simplicity and quiet culture which were 
once the qualities of the community. Urban pedantry 
even gives the houses names of the stilted " Maplewood" 
and " Fairview " type. The sewing society of the old 
time has been supplanted by receptions at four o'clock in 
the afternoon, resplendent with the latest triumphs of the 
French modiste ; dog-carts with horses driven tandem and 
panoplied like mediaeval steeds bump their owners up 
and down along the streets, satirizing comfort with fash- 
ion's latest folly ; and downy young men of rich dress and 
tender brawn affect more the vices of the city than sturdy 
rural virtues. To all this mass of vanity and nonsense 
town-meeting day comes as a refreshing country breeze 
strikes a superheated city. The old court-house, at least 
that lower story of it that embraces the town-hall, is flung 
open ; the ballot-boxes, plain, unvarnished mementoes of 
many a bitter local strife, are arranged in line behind the 
much-dented parody of a desk ; the ancient bell, which 



I84 BY-fVAVS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

summoned our fathers to the duty of citizenship, dings 
out a lively peal ; and one by one the bucolic freemen 
gather, less impressed, to all visible aspects, with the respon- 
sibilities of the day than with the chance it gives them to 
meet neighbors, talk crops, or drive a bargain. They 
come to town-meeting a good deal as they go to church, 
only here are parties instead of sects, with no text, no 
sermon, and not much religion. 

For one who sixteen years ago was familiar with almost 
every voter in town, there is no more impressive signal of 
passing time than a revisit to the polls on " town-meetin' " 
day. Sixteen years work a vast change in a Yankee 
constituency of voters. Boys in skirts, heaping up their 
mud-pies, have grown to be electors ; stalwart men of mid- 
dle age have lapsed into decrepitude, and half a genera- 
tion of freemen have gone over to that Great Majority 
which political parties can neither make nor unmake. 
Watch the string of voters as it passes before the boxes. 
A form bowed with age you recall by some familiar move- 
ment as once a Hercules of the fields most famous for 
" liftin' the biggest stun " among all the farmers of the 
township. A young voter, bearded, browned, and sturdy, 
is next in line. He is a stranger to your eye, but as the 
checker calls his name you remember him as a youngster 
fishing for minnows, with one suspender, an alder pole and 
a fishhook big enough to catch a shark. Next comes a 
figure prematurely old, with dulled eye and shabby coat. 
Twenty years ago he was the head boy of the Sunday- 



A YANKEE TOWN-MEETING. 1 85 

school, later a leader of the village youth when any mis- 
chief was brewing. But self-indulgence came, ripened 
into vice, and his life is a wreck. So the string of voters 
moves on. Some few are familiar, but most of them are 
unknown or recognized only by the family name and 
feature ; but on all who are remembered time has stamped 
his unerring mark. One can but notice, too, how few, 
comparatively, in number are the young men, so many of 
whom, representing the vigor and ambition of agricul- 
tural New England, have joined the endless procession 
that moves from our Yankee farms to the growing 
West. 

No town-meeting in a New England community of any 
size would be complete without its auction. At no other 
time of the year can the truck of farm and household be 
sold to so large and varied a set of patrons. Some farmer 
moving away, a bankrupt householder, or a merchant 
" selling out," supplies the stock in trade ; and words are 
feeble to describe the medley of second-hand goods 
dumped out before the Litchfield court-house. Every- 
thing is there, from a broken sewing-machine down to a 
rusty chain or a nicked axe old enough to have figured in 
the familiar legend of Washington's boyhood. Over all 
this conglomerate of truck stands the auctioneer, a pre- 
dominating figure at Litchfield town-meetings long to be 
remembered, and now, at seventy-seven, so old as to be a 
social landmark of the village. Tall and angular, with 
spectacled nose like the beak of a Roman galley set on 



l86 BV-WAYS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

the face of a Socrates, a voice like that of the Numidian 
lion, a ready tongue, and a wit whose Attic salt time has 
not even yet freshened, he does more to enliven a Litch- 
field town-meeting than all other characters united. Con- 
sistent piety, kindly and generous temper, and a simple, 
unaffected life round off the personality of a man who 
more than all the rest seems to me to symbolize the spirit 
of those town-meetings at which he has been auctioneer 
for time out of mind. Good old Tom Saltonstall ! Long 
may he live to knock down to the highest bidder the 
archaic kettle and prismatic-hued bedquilt ; and at that 
Great Town-Meeting where we shall all gather when time 
and eternity meet, may no figure more sinister than his be 
there to bid us welcome. 

No form so effectively as old Tom's sweeps memory 
back twenty years to the boyish pranks that used to make 
election-day a carnival of mischief for the youth of Litch- 
field. The crowd he gathered at the auction in front of 
the court-house always tempted us to some half-lawless 
trickery. In those times, and up to two or three years 
ago, the State election came on the first Monday in April, 
and the voters not uncommonly came to the polls in 
sleighs over a hasty-pudding compound of mud and dirty 
snow. When a fall of snow became moist under an 
election-day sun, so as to pack easily into balls, the heart 
of every true Litchfield lad thumped with delight. Then 
half a dozen of the most agile of us would " shin " up the 
lightning-rod to the belfry forty or fifty feet above, and, 



^ A YANKEE TOWN-MEETING. 18/ 

secure in our perch, pelt mercilessly the helpless and some- 
what profane crowd of sovereign voters clustered about 
Tom below. It is hard, even now, without a smile, to re- 
member that band of lawless youngsters entrenched over 
the court-room once graced by an Ellsworth, a Gould, and a 
Reeve, and, like some more modern rogues, finding protec- 
tion for our iniquity under the very aegis of justice. Some 
of us, now grown, let us hope, into more law-abiding 
citizens, may recall one of the exciting episodes of that 
roguery — how the grim curator of the old court-house 
attacked us through the skylight, deeming he had cut off 
our line of retreat, and how with disappointment he stood 
aghast as the expected victims slid down the lightning- 
rod to solid ground ; .how then we devised a new scheme 
of attack, and a dozen boys, going behind the court-house, 
made each a heap of snowballs like a miniature pyramid 
of cannon-shot. A few balls fired over the temple of 
justice gave us the range, and at a given signal the bom- 
bardment of Tom's crowd began ; each boy using up his 
heap as fast as possible, then making a sort of Bull Run 
retreat to an adjacent system of barns and cow-sheds. 
How we laughed when we pictured the dismay of the sturdy 
electors at the rain of snowballs coming from an unseen 
foe, and how slyly we gave one another the wink when, a 
few minutes after, we met in the same crowd with faces 
as smug and innocent as cradled babes. 

To some of us of an earlier day town-meeting was a 
luminous epoch of the year that changed an impecunious 



1 88 BY-WAYS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

lad into a bloated capitalist. For on that day we received 
a stipend of an old-fashioned ninepence, and Vanderbilt 
never contemplated his millions with a bigger sense of 
money potency than was ours as we marched down-town 
with what seemed a nation's wealth in our vest pockets. 
Money then, as in later years, brought its responsibility, 
for the youthful brain was racked between sacrificing the 
ninepence at one swoop for a bowl of oysters, or sub- 
dividing its purchase power into small beer and sundry 
cakes or candy. No Peel or Gladstone ever labored over 
a national budget more than did we over this fiscal prob- 
lem. The oysters sold in an open tent usually carried the 
day, for they came up fresh from " Dragon," as Fair 
Haven, then the entrepot of Connecticut's oyster trade, 
used to be called ; and besides, we had a trick of swallow- 
ing the crackers or broth first, and begging a fresh supply 
of one or both. What later feast at Delmonico's, or 
triumph of Gallic cookery, has ever equalled those bowls 
of Dragon oysters in the days when the youthful maw was 
insatiable, and appetite was sharpened by the keen au- 
tumnal air? 

In a small way, but how curiously, rural character is 
revealed by the simple act of voting. One elector, proud 
of his party fealty, walks up with every ballot displayed 
to view. Another sneaks in his ballot as he would lift a 
chicken from the nocturnal roost of a neighbor. Fun, 
austerity, responsibility, all points of character crop out 
in the exercise of the freeman's right. A different and 



A YANKEE TOWN-MEETING. 1 89 

more amusing field for study is opened by the garbs 
of the voters in every phase from looped raggedness to 
broadcloth. Town-meeting day comes at just about the 
time of the year when the straw hat of the backwoodsman 
has survived its summer beauty, if not its usefulness. 
What a varied aspect its faded, dirty, broad-brimmed, 
ragged-edged individuality has ! Now turned down in 
front and elevated behind, or vice versd ; now slanted for- 
ward on the forehead, anon perched at a forty-five-degree 
angle on the cerebellum ; sometimes with the whole broad 
circular brim uplifted, sometimes depressed until it looks 
like a serrated pot-lid, color and all. Some of the cos- 
tumes which come in once a year from the back districts 
would alone make the fortune of a character actor, with 
their Gothic cut and literally matchless patchwork of 
color. It seems almost as if one could mark off the gen- 
erations of the owner's family by the seams of his panta- 
loons. On one occasion, years ago, I remember a voter 
who came in to a Litchfield election from a region appro- 
priately named Hardscrabble. He had on a complete suit 
roughly sewn together from coffee-bags, of a cut and finish 
utterly indescribable. A pair of pantaloons worn in by an 
Irishman at the presidential polling day of 1856, are also 
fixed indelibly in memory. They were of tawny hue, and 
between black concentric circles the motto " Buck, and 
Breck." emphasized the wearer's Presidential preference. 
Years afterward, when fishing along a trout-stream, I saw 
the same dense integuments, and on the same owner. 



190 BY. WAYS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

Doubtless those political trousers survive to this day, 
though, it may be, partitioned so as to fit the young 
understandings of a later Hibernian generation. 

At two o'clock comes the open meeting for the election 
by viva-voce vote of some petty town-officers. A clerk is 
chosen, and the moderator behind the boxes — to-day an 
old church deacon, chosen for his fairness and non-parti- 
sanship — rattles off the nominations, which are ratified 
by a vote of about one each. Five minutes after this 
formal business was ended, and after the moderator in 
stentorian voice had announced, " Gentlemen, proceed 
with your voting," the clerk discovered that the open 
meeting had chosen no haywards, three of whom figure 
annually on Litchfield's dignified list of town-officers. 
Without the formality of reopening the meeting, three 
haywards were nominated and elected in a trice. The 
hayward is a Yankee official, charged with the grave func- 
tion of driving stray cattle to pound at a fee of fifty cents 
each. As kine do not get astray in Litchfield streets half 
a dozen times a year, and are rarely impounded when they 
do, the office of hayward will scarcely become the prey of 
vaulting politicians. Speaking of the moderator, it was 
delightful to see how, to-day, his Yankee pluck and com- 
mon-sense solved the questions which arose as to the right 
of electors to vote. In one case, after an adverse decision, 
a vociferous village lawyer attempted to browbeat him, 
saying: "Mr. Moderator, for three years you have de- 
cided this question the other way." "All right," was the 



A YANKEE TOWN-MEETING, I9I 

response ; " if I have decided the question for three years 
wrong the other way, all the more reason why I should 
decide it right now." 

The informality and even carelessness of the voting at 
a New England town-meeting would delight the ward 
politician of the city. In one instance a red-headed voter 
marched up to the polls. His name was called, and be- 
fore it had been checked his vote was in the boxes, which, 
by the way, have holes big enough to thrust in one's fist. 
Then it was found that the voter's name was not on the 
check-list at all, and that his residence in the town had 
not quahfied him to vote. However, his vote was in, and 
the Supreme Court of Connecticut could n't get it out. 
There was blank consternation for a moment, but finally 
the irregularity was compounded by a general and good- 
humored laugh. So, too, after the count of the ballots 
had proceeded for an hour — in a kind of wooden cage set 
in the corner of the hall, and doubtless from patriotic zeal 
painted red, white, and blue — it was remembered that the 
check-book was needed to verify the vote. The check- 
book had been left outside, and half the freemen in the 
room had scanned it, with every chance, had they desired, 
to check off fifty additional names. 

Race and hereditary influences in voting crop out vividly 
in a Yankee town-meeting. There are a hundred or so 
Irish voters in Litchfield, and probably every one of them 
to-day not only voted the Democratic ticket, but affirma- 
tively on the more momentous local " issue " of licensing 



192 B Y- WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

the retail liquor traffic. Far more suggestive was it, how- 
ever, to see how powerful is hereditary example in Yankee 
politics, and how invariably to-day every son followed the 
political leadership of the father. Put race and congenital 
influence together, and they offer a sad commentary on 
voting independence. Here was an intelligent Yankee 
town, with a well-educated constituency who read the 
papers and scan passing events. Yet in it, as in every 
other American community, the party line was drawn not 
by reflection, sober judgment, and independence, but by 
the merest accident of birth and association. How many 
men cast a thinking vote ? is a blunt query which, after 
seeing a Yankee town-meeting, addresses itself with pecul- 
iar force to every man unfettered by the links of party. 



ON BLACK ICE. 

LATE inNovember, when the sun, even at noon, hangs 
low on the southern horizon, and the short days pass 
swiftly into long and freezing nights, there comes on the 
ponds and rivers of New England the first ice of the year, 
usually, in rural phrase, called " black ice." The term will 
no doubt mystify most city folk, whose ignorance is dense 
of those many and picturesque forms that ice in the 
country puts on, from its first appearance in late autumn 
until its melting moods of spring. To the habitual city 
resident these wondrous changes are as a sealed book of 
mystery. He only knows of ice as a dripping, half-disin- 
tegrated, semi-opaque mass of matter, tumbled out each 
morning on the pavement from lumbering carts — a thing 
essential in cooling drinks, and figuring with unerring cer- 
tainty in the bill of household expenses. Even the city 
skater who visits that yeasty, snowy compound called ice, 
at Central Park, and bumps about in the rough sea of 
humankind, never discovers what real ice is. To that 
artificial city product, the early black ice in the country is 
as blue sky to a fog-bank, or as the clearest of mountain 
streams to the turbid current that drifts along the drain 
of a metropolitan purlieu. 

There is something almost poetic in that transforma- 
193 



194 BV-IVAVS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

tion which comes on the surface of a clear mountain pond 
at the first touch of Jack Frost in the latter days of No- 
vember. The cold nights which skim the puddles and 
smaller areas of water leave for some days the larger 
ponds unfrozen, or skirt their edges with a little scalloped 
fringe of icy needles. Then comes a night more biting 
than the rest, followed, it may be, by a lusty " cold snap "; 
day following day with blue sky, and with that tense dry 
quality in the cutting air which can almost be seen as well 
as felt in the tingling finger-ends. Visit at this time the 
mountain lake and see what has happened. A few rods 
away it seems just what it was before. There is the same 
deep blackness of water outside of the lines of reflected 
sunlight, the same slanting rays of silver where the sun- 
light falls. But the breezes do not ruffle it, the tree- 
shadows are pictured on it less vividly, and its placid, 
changeless surface appears to mock every movement of 
nature around it. Step out on this mysterious sheet of 
crystal without fear, for though not more than an inch 
and a half thick it will bear you up without a crack. It 
takes a species of faith to make this first advance, for it 
seems almost as though one were walking into water. But 
the surface, instead of giving way, is firm as marble under- 
foot. You are borne up as by some invisible power, and 
held in suspension between air and water. I can conceive 
of no feeling, for one who experiences it for the first time, 
more exhilarating than the initial steps on the black ice of 
clear country waters. It is not ice on which one seems to 



ON BLACK ICE. I95 

tread, but calm, solid water, and the bottom below, with 
weed, rock, sandy slope, or matted limbs, is as distinctly 
outlined as though in the air above. 

This black ice formed at the first freezing contrasts 
strikingly with the later snow-ice, not only in appearance 
but other qualities. The axe which at one blow may sink 
almost to the helve in snow-ice can be struck into the 
black surface not more than an inch or an inch and a half 
at a stroke. The black ice splinters into bits under the 
blow like brittle flint, while the snow-ice crumbles or splits 
into large fragments. Taken in the hand and examined 
more critically, the black ice reveals many points of beauty 
and interest. That dark aspect when resting on water 
which gives it its local name is exchanged for a purity like 
crystal. Instead of air bubbles, it contains a few spicules, 
fine as cambric needles and as straight and smooth as the 
column of mercury in a delicate thermometer. The spe- 
cific gravity of black ice must be very high. I have seen 
a floating cake two inches thick which showed a mere film 
above the water surface. The men of science tell us that 
the Arctic icebergs have from seven eighths to eight ninths 
of their mass under water. If one of these bergs could be 
changed to black ice and dropped in fresh water, at least 
nineteen twentieths of its bulk would probably be sub- 
merged. The strength of this solid new ice in comparison 
with the weaker varieties is prodigious. German military 
authority is quoted as declaring that on a thickness of 
four inches a regiment of men can cross without breaking 



196 B y- WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

ranks. It bends like rubber before it will break, and it 
takes a warm sun to melt even a film of its surface. I re- 
call from boyhood a striking proof of the elasticity of 
black ice. In one of the towns of Northwest Connecticut, 
between two lakes, stretches a long reach of level bog- 
land which a winter's thaw often covers with water. Years 
ago one of these periodical overflows covered the bogs, 
and a sharp snap of cold weather left a level surface of 
black ice several inches thick. Then the water receded, 
leaving the ice hung on the bogs, but bent between them 
into a series of long depressions like the troughs of Atlantic 
waves. The sensation of skating over these long billows 
of ice was peculiarly novel, and for days the lads of the 
near village indulged in it with irrepressible delight. 

The beauty and variety of the vegetable forms that 
flourish at the bottom of a country pond in winter are won- 
derful. A common popular fallacy attributes to water- 
plants that same decay and wintry death which blights 
leaf and blossom in the open air. This is sweepingly true 
only of the water vegetation which reaches to the surface. 
Below, in shallow waters and on muddy bottoms, plant- 
life is for the most part not only perennially green, but 
abundant. Even the great lilypads appear to keep their 
verdure far into the winter, and tangled masses of a plant 
that looks like subaqueous chickweed are as fresh and 
green as the garden growths of June. It is a strangely 
fascinating sight one sees either when skating over shal- 
lows or lying down and gazing through the clear ice at 



ON BLACK ICE. K^-j 

nature's v?atery conservatory. In the shallows the plants 
are twisted together in a wild water-jungle of weeds, some 
blackened by the cold, others in every shade of green, but 
all running down to a thick, verdant carpet of hair-like 
grasses that lines the bottom. As the water deepens the 
larger vegetation disappears, but the grassy carpet remains, 
a zone of greenery between the shallows and the deeper 
waters of the pond. Then comes, perhaps, a mud bottom, 
too deep for water-plants, but not too far^own for the 
eye to see it ; then a stretch of white sand, rocks between 
which minnows dart, an old tree-trunk, or a.^hoal of sunken 
leaves, until finally the bottom drops away, and vision is 
lost in an impenetrable gloom of water. 

Even more striking than the diversity of plant-life is 
the marvellous range of insect-existence to be found in 
the winter weeds of our rural ponds. Cut a small hole 
through the ice, and the familiar phenomenon of a sun- 
beam passing through the dust of a room is repeated. 
Like the sunbeam this watery ray is filled with motes, 
and a closer view shows them to be darting organisms so 
small that only movement can be distinguished. The 
most curious of the many creatures of large size that live 
in the weeds is one that can probably be found by thou- 
sands in the winter vegetation of almost any New Eng- 
land pond. It is a larva about an inch in length, and 
twice the diameter of a match, fitted on the body with 
hair-like appendages, and near the head with a lively set 
of organs which seem partly legs, partly feelers. This 



198 BY. WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

strange creature lives like a human being, in a wooden 
house. You see what seems to be a hollow twig two or 
three inches long lying quietly on the bottom. Presently 
the twig begins to stir. Then there protrude a head and 
feelers with which the singular fellow begins to climb 
from one blade of water-grass to another, dragging pain- 
fully after him his wooden habitation held by his tail 
within. The relation in size between the two is about 
that of a common house-fly to a cigarette. When alarmed 
the creature snaps back its head and feelers into its 
wooden case and sinks to the bottom, where the sharpest 
eye cannot distinguish it from a twig. How subtle must 
be the instinct that prompts this low organism thus to 
protect itself from its foes, and, scientifically speaking, 
adapt itself to its environment ! Like mankind with a 
wooden habitation in life, so, in case of sudden death, it 
is conveniently furnished with a wooden cofifin. For a 
long time after first seeing the odd creature I supposed 
its wooden house to have been formed by eating the pith 
from a twig. But after catching a specimen and dissect- 
ing its home I found that it was built from sections of thin 
wooden tubing, which the inmate had cemented together 
so nicely that the fibres would part at the original wood 
before they would separate at the joints. That these joints 
were artificially made was proved afterward by the dis- 
covery of a specimen of the creature that had selected 
bright green bark for two sections of its tubing, and was 
dragging about a variegated house colored green and dark 
in alternate parts. 



ON BLACK ICE 1 99 

Closely related to the foregoing larva is another cu- 
rious fellow, smaller in size and somewhat like a grub, that 
can be seen by hundreds under the black ice. This species 
builds up around its body a structure of small round 
leaves, undoubtedly gathered from some of the smaller 
water-plants. When its house is finished the structure 
looks precisely in form and size like one of the hops of 
commerce. Where the stem joins the hop is, in this 
creature's habitation, a hole whence the larva projects its 
head and feelers. With a dwelling twenty times its own 
bulk, this larva makes slow progress, though it can both 
swim and crawl along on plants. It seems to delight in 
rising to the under surface of the ice, and, when touched 
with a stick, by some .occult means drops swiftly to the 
bottom, where, inverting its house, it grasps the grassy 
filaments, thus keeping its head protected and closing the 
entrance of its domicile. In many specimens it will be 
found that the entrance is strengthened by four little 
beams of wood laid in a perfect square, and serving ex- 
actly the purpose for which men brace up the earth or 
rock at the entrance of a tunnel. Still another, but much 
rarer, winter inhabitant of our ponds is green in color, 
sharp at both ends, and about twice the size of a mos- 
quito. Just behind the head he is equipped with flippers, 
each about two thirds the length of the body. These 
flippers he uses as a bird does its wings, darting his 
body forward and flying through the water with a series 
of convulsive jerks. 



200 BY.PVAVS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

The coming of the black ice gives rare opportunity to 
observe some of the winter habits of fish. If one reaches 
the pond early when the ice is clearest and before the 
noisy skaters have driven the fish into deep water, he will 
often find the pickerel in large numbers along the weedy 
shallows. In the summer the pickerel is the greyhound 
of fresh waters. No fish — not even the lithe trout— can 
rival the speed with which the frightened pickerel shoots 
through the watery spaces. But in the winter this fish 
seems to lose some of his swimming powers. When followed 
under the ice he goes swiftly, it is true, but with a clumsy, 
irregular motion, and not too fast for a rapid skater to fol- 
low closely. When chased thus until tired he ends pursuit 
by a dive into the thick -weeds and mud, leaving where he 
hides a turbid bit of water. Often also may be seen be- 
neath the ice a great school of sluggish suckers. Skate 
over them and they disperse as awkwardly as affrighted 
cattle, each in the other's way and ploughing up deep 
furrows in the mud by their wild efforts to escape. Seen 
in his common mood, the sucker seems the philosopher of 
fishes. His quiet life and his meditative habit give him 
an outward semblance of profound fishy wisdom. His 
big head, however, must be all skull and no brains, for the 
slightest fear turns it, and he falls an easy prey to the re- 
morseless net and cruel spear. The tradition about the 
ostrich is a deadly reality in the life of the sucker, who 
will often push his head under a stone under the fatal 
delusion that his whole body is hidden from the pursuing 



ON BLACK ICE. 201 

foe. He is a fishy type of the people who, by reticence 
and sedateness, get up a huge reputation for wisdom only 
to blast it when their first emergency comes. 

It need scarcely be suggested that the coming of the black 
ice marks a rosy epoch of the year for Yankee boys — and 
girls. The brief season of Thanksgiving vacation loses 
half its character without skating, and no skating ever 
equals that on the glassy black ice on moonlight nights, 
when Cupid doffs his wings and puts on the gleaming 
runners. But at its best the black-ice season >s sure to be a 
doubtful and transitory one. For a day or two after the 
cold snap so hoped and prayed for by youths and maidens, 
the surface of the ice may be so pure that the whitest 
finger leaves a mark ofi its clear face. In a day or two, 
however, the inevitable transition begins. Its crystalline 
quality departs, its surface becomes pock-marked, white 
bubbles somehow enter it, and the slightest thaw obscures 
that panoramic view of the underlying bottom which 
gives black ice its chiefest charm. Then comes winter in 
earnest, when the ice is hidden and thickens into those 
firm strata of frozen snow and water which make up the 
ice of trade. At last, too, arrives the period when even 
this ice, foot-thick and seemingly as eternal as the rocks, 
must follow winter to death. Then may be seen that 
strange phenomenon of the break-up which each spring 
brings to pass. To the unskilled eye the ice appears as 
adamantine as in midwinter, and after a brief cold snap 
it will be temporarily so strong that an ox-team may be 



202 B y- WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

driven across in safety. But meanwhile softening forces 
are at work. Sun and rain disintegrate the ice-sheet, and 
the vernal south wind makes its surface wrinkled and 
porous. The whole vast area is like a bundle of ice- 
needles bound together by a thread ; the open spaces 
increase day by day ; at noon great spaces surge in 
wavelets under a man's tread ; and, when the field drifts 
against the shore, from the surface shoot in air straight 
bars of ice driven upward by the strain. Then comes a 
warm day with a high wind to break winter's last fetter. 
Suddenly, as if by magic, the great field dissolves. The 
thread is broken, the ice-needles fall apart, and the flash- 
ing waters surging up signal a new season of leaf and 
flower. 



THE OLD COLLEGE BALL-GROUND. 

ACADEMIC base-ball, in most of its sanguinary 
qualities, probably differs not much from the sport 
elsewhere ; nor can even the puissant mind of the college 
senior devise a plan to avoid the distempered joints and 
unscholarly aroma of arnica which everywhere distin- 
guish the game. But if ever our national diversion has its 
dashes of sentiment and beauty, they would have been 
suggested by a scene like that at the old college ball- 
ground in New Haven one lovely day last May when, 
under blue skies and a bright sun, the nines of Yale and 
Harvard met for their first contest of the year. That 
annual meeting is the capital base-ball event in the sleepy 
academic town ; local feeling in and out of college focal- 
izes upon it as on no other competition save, may be, the 
boat-race at New London ; youth and beauty, age and 
professorial dignity, all cluster together for the hour 
around the fateful diamond ; and both at New Haven and 
in the return match at Cambridge the traditional rivalry 
of the two old universities gives an interest to the con- 
test v/hich quite eclipses the wider chances of the college 
base-ball championship. 

It is strange that no American artist of fame has ever 
portrayed on canvas a spectacle of life and color like that 
203 



204 B Y- WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

on the old college ball-field during this annual ball-game. 
Certainly one may go far and see many sights before so 
charming a scene will repeat itself. A broad expanse of 
greensward is edged with a distant grove on one side, and 
on the other the suburbs and pointed spires of the town. 
Northward rises the wrinkled front of West Rock, and 
southward through the trees is a broken view of the 
dimpled Sound. All this, however, is but the outer frame- 
work of a picture whose chief beauty is in its details. 
First the eye catches the forms of the nine players, whose 
bright tints in blue or red point with color the green 
field which serves them as a foil. Even were those 
colors less vivid, the sight of these strong college strip- 
lings, with their fresh, clear-cut faces, so different from 
the profile of the professional hireling, would be a most 
refreshing vision. Back a bit from the field comes that 
great wedge of spectators which is the most characteristic 
sign of a good ball-game. The long rows of white faces 
gleaming in the sun rise in strata one above the other, so 
densely packed that it seems as though the wedge were 
some great compound human animal stirred by one emo- 
tion when a good play on the field excites it. Finally 
comes another garland of color — carriages stretching in a 
crescent around the outer field filled with bouquets of 
girlhood, whips flying the college colors, long ribbons in 
blue or red, and a bright medley of tints fluttering every- 
where in the wind. Suffuse all this spectacle with May 
sunshine, give it human motion and life, pervade it with 



THE OLD COLLEGE BALL-GROUND. 205 

that subtile current of interest and excitement which col- 
lege rivalry evokes, and then name, if possible, any more 
absorbing scene with no elements more serious than sport. 
That particular May-day spectacle deserved too, to be re- 
membered long ; for it was the last of the kind that will be 
seen at Hamilton Park for many a day. The ball-games 
will be shifted hereafter to the new athletic grounds of the 
college, and the old park, where so many generations of 
college athletes have contended, will be left to its memo- 
ries. In a quarter of a century more, streets will intersect 
it, the sprawling city will cover it, and its identity will be 
lost under prosaic curbstone, roadway, and dwelling. 

To the old ball-player who, ten, fifteen, or twenty years 
ago, bore, albeit feebly, his share on the college field, that 
last important game on the venerable park brought back 
some strange memories of the earlier past. Those were 
lively days of the sport back in '65 and '66, Just about 
that period a wild base-ball craze swept the country from 
end to end. Every village and hamlet bragged its nine, 
and mighty and fierce were the local rivalries generated. 
As played by rural nines, the game was breezy and demo- 
cratic to the last degree. The ball, charged to its full 
with rubber, bounded among the dazed fielders with the 
ricochet of a cannon-shot. Curved pitching was unknown, 
and the ball was either delivered slowly or straight and 
swiftly. All the striker had to do was to take aim, " let 
out " muscle, and chance consequences. The big scores 
of those free-and-easy days read funnily now. I remem- 



205 B Y. WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

ber one eventful rustic game of but seven innings, when 
the score stood one hundred and forty-four to forty-six. 
More than forty runs were tallied in a single inning, and 
sixteen home runs were recorded altogether in that fa- 
mous struggle. As to the bat, and, indeed, as to most of 
the details of the game, there was a code of rules, but 
there was boundless contempt of their terms. One coun- 
try nine, famous for prowess in hitting, had its bats made 
of huge square pickets, " whittled " down at one end. 
Another team bore vast round beams of basswood as 
large as a man's thigh, bored out and charged with corks 
to make them light. Against the slow pitching of that 
primitive period these colossal pudding-sticks proved sin- 
gularly effective. With the first bound " out," both for 
fair and foul balls, players in the out-field always waited 
till the ball struck the ground ; and he was a hero indeed 
who recorded a long fly-catch. " Far, oh, far from gay," 
to use the words of a departed American humorist, were 
the relations of the umpire to the players and crowd. 
That dignified and responsible oflficer usually sat in a lofty 
chair, shaded by an umbrella of vast circumference. He 
was a grotesque figure, bellowing out his decisions in 
thunderous tones, the target for the fertile blackguards of 
the crowd, and fortunate if he survived a game without 
being superseded ; for the lookers-on invariably consti- 
tuted themselves a high court of appeal, without any 
legal delicacies of language. His, indeed, was, at games 
played in factory towns, a well-nigh tragic position, so 



THE OLD COLLEGE BALL-GROUND. 20/ 

lively flew at times the stones and brick-bats around his 
airy perch ; and not seldom it seemed as though he would 
have to qualify for reading the riot act and, after the 
game, call out the militia to cover his retreat from the 
field. Base-ball in those times, too, was spectacular as 
well as bellicose. Uniforms were of astounding cut, 
and as variegated as Joseph's scriptural coat. Every nine 
of prominence had its vivid badge made of silk ribbon 
emblazoned with the title of the club; and as these 
badges were exchanged at matches, and each player wore 
on his uniform these accumulated trophies, a base-ballist 
of those days as he sped over the field looked like a fugi- 
tive court jester. 

At Hamilton Park the game used to be played in more 
gentlemanly spirit, and the umpire's place was not alto- 
gether an austere one. But some curious notions pre- 
vailed as to the way of forming an effective college nine. 
Heavy hitting was the prime requisite, and size combined 
with muscle were the credentials of the player. Hence 
the team was made up of a rollicking set of clumsy giants, 
tremendous but very uncertain hitters, and with scarcely 
more conception of the nicer points of the game than so 
many oxen. I remember seeing one of these college 
Titans strike a line-ball not more than four feet from the 
ground far beyond the centre-fielder, who stood much 
farther from the batsman than now ; and one ball I recall, 
raised scarcely a foot from the grass, which first struck 
within a few feet of the right-fielder's place. Large scores 



208 B y. WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

were, of course, the rule, and even down to '72 they ran 
up into the twenties. Many a funny incident crosses 
memory in looking back on those old days at the park. 
In one of the games a line ball struck the pitcher — a 
pulpy, round-headed classmate whose fame for slow 
twisters was largely due to a strong out-field — squarely 
on the side of the head. The ball caromed sideways to 
the third baseman, who caught it on the fly, putting the 
striker out amid shrieks of merriment. In another instance, 
during a match game a swift " liner " hit the short-stop on 
the ankles, followed up his body, and was caught at the 
chest. Perhaps, however, the most famous catch of all 
was that of an indifferent player at second base whose 
back happened to be turned just as a hard-hit ball was 
struck to him. He turned suddenly, exactly in time, as 
it seemed, to receive the ball in the pit of the stomach. 
But he threw out his left hand defensively, and the ball, 
to the utter amazement of the spectators, and even more 
of the player himself, "stuck" between thumb and fore- 
finger. Another college player of those days was deaf, 
and played under a special dispensation that he should 
not be held responsible to the rules when running on foul 
tips. 

Then as now the whole season's play at the park led up 
to the great game with Harvard in July; and certainly it 
seemed a perverse fate which year after year gave the op- 
posing college victory by narrow margins of one or two 
runs. The real obstacle to Yale's success, however, was 



THE OLD COLLEGE BALL-GROUND. 209 

one man, for three years Captain of the Harvard nine and 
then a predominating figure in college base-bail. To name 
" Archie " Bush is to recall probably the best college 
player that ever swung a bat or crossed the home-plate. 
Twice at least some of us can remember how his nerve, 
coolness, and infinite capacity for meeting a crisis bafHed 
one of Yale's best nines ; and once, in particular, during 
the contest of 1871, how his mighty sky-ball to the far left- 
field took victory in the ninth inning out of the very teeth 
of defeat. "Out of the woods, but not out of the Bush ** 
then passed into a base-ball aphorism at Yale. A power- 
ful hitter, a sure catch, a capital all-round player, a model 
of physical grace, and withal, a perfect gentleman, he will 
long be remembered as- the ideal character of the college 
ball-field, whose untimely death was as sincerely mourned 
by old adversaries as by friends. 

After all, that old game had its special advantages. Its 
varying ups and downs, its long hits, even its errors and 
general looseness, gave it spice and excitement. It had a 
scope and swing that one misses in these times of precise 
and mechanical play. But as a science it is amazing to 
see how college ball-playing has advanced. Dead-balls, 
curved pitching, and close play behind the home-plate 
have revolutionized the sport. As to throwing, too, in 
precision and speed, the later college ball-player leaves his 
predecessor of ten years ago far behind ; and the same is 
true of all the in-field work of the game. The out-field 
play of college nines, however, shows no corresponding 



2IO BV-fVAVS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

improvement, partly, perhaps, because there is less work 
to be done. As compared with professionals, college 
players show about the same disparity as in the old period. 
In fly-catching they play the out-field better and the in- 
field quite as well. But they still lack the steady execu- 
tion and, above all, the batting power in which the mus- 
cular long-trained professional must ever excel. In one 
respect to the eye of the old player, this modern highly- 
developed game shows a queer anomaly. It is posi- 
tively more uncertain in its results between evenly- 
matched clubs then the game of ten or fifteen years ago. 
Then errors were many enough to offset each other, and 
the number of runs left rather more range in which su- 
periority could express itself. Now, with but two or 
three runs on a side, a single costly error or a timely base- 
hit tells the story of a match won or lost. Paradoxical 
as it may sound, the more exact the base-ball science the 
less certain have become its results. 

Sadder and more solemn changes than those of the 
game could be seen that May day on the old park, so soon 
to be forsaken. How strange it seemed to pass before the 
long rows of spectators and scarcely recognize one face ! 
Some college professor, perchance, with wrinkles deeper 
set than once, one or two gray-haired townsmen, or a half- 
extinct college belle lapsing into spinsterhood, were all 
one could trace out from the goodly base-ball gatherings 
of half a generation ago. A more impressive mark of the 
gap of years was that strangely youthful aspect of the 



THE OLD COLLEGE BALL-GROUND. 211 

student crowds which every graduate remarks, not be- 
cause students are younger now than then, but because 
he himself is older ; and finally the unfamiliar forms of 
the players manning the old positions — the scene the 
same, the old actors all changed. One whose tall, lithe 
figure once covered second base, now a church luminary, 
strong in exegesis ; another whose long throws were the 
wonder of the whole college, now a sedate lawyer, stout 
and affluent ; a third, a crack fielder, who already on 
'Change has made and lost half a dozen fortunes ; some 
climbing already to fame, some toiling on in dull obscu- 
rity ; some poor, some prospered, and not a few whom 
the Great Umpire has already summoned in from the field 
amid those deepening shadows which, soon or late, shall 
close the long game of hfe for us all. 



AN HISTORIC MEETING-HOUSE. 

IN April of the year 1637 there arrived at Boston, in the 
ship Hector, a company of two hundred English 
colonists. In one important particular these settlers dif- 
fered from many of the pioneer parties that preceded or 
followed them to the New World. They came not as 
refugees from kingcraft or as fugitives from religious 
rancor, but prompted by the more solid if less sentimental 
motive of making wealth. They had with them large 
means for those times, amounting, with due allowance for 
difference of values, to not less than half a million of dol- 
lars. They brought also the Bible, the Common Law, 
and pious traditions and habitudes. But their Yankee 
descendants, albeit much they may yearn to trace down 
their ancestral roots to some Mayflower soil of moral 
purpose and adventurous self-sacrifice, will seek it vainly 
in the early records of these colonists, who, leaving Boston 
in March, 1638, sailed around Cape Cod and entering the 
Sound " squatted " on what is the present site of New 
Haven. Here they plotted out their settlement in 
squares around a central rectangle, the original outlines of 
which the spreading city still preserves ; they built them 
dwellings far too ambitious for their time and place ; they 
organized a local government, established a court, reared 



AN HISTORIC MEETING-HOUSE. 21$ 

one or two storehouses, laid in a trading stock, and set- 
tled down with lofty hopes of gain by barter and foreign 
commerce. But partly by sheer bad luck in marine ven- 
ture, partly by the unthrift and extravagance that were 
ill placed in a wilderness adapted to only the smallest be- 
ginnings, the colony went rapidly into decline ; and only 
a few years later we find its estates shrunken in value, its 
commerce dormant, and its people hopeless and despond- 
ent. When it founded its settlement in 1638 the New 
Haven colony was the richest in New England ; twenty 
years later, if not the poorest, it was, at least, the deepest 
sunk in listlessness and despair. 

In early New England the town and the meeting-house 
were always born and nurtured together ; and, without its 
place of worship to focalize its public and religious activ- 
ities, the New Haven colony would have missed half its 
natal character. Ground for the first structure was, ac- 
cordingly, broken promptly in 1638, not long after the 
colonists landed ; and in the following year the building 
was finished — a quaint edifice whose architecture would 
excite the derision of a flippant posterity that associates 
worship with the ornate and florid church of our later 
days. The primitive meeting-house stood, a solitary and 
isolated structure, on New Haven Green. Its body was 
cube-shaped, rising to a sharp hip-roof, and the effect 
of the whole was that of a clumsy block-house. It was 
sixty feet square, with solid walls, and inside the pyra- 
midal turret a sentinel kept lonely watch. This martial 



214 BV-fVAVS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

type of our far ancestral church building was indeed not 
merely fitting but necessary in rough times, when the In- 
dians roamed the woods and the sudden attack of a hos- 
tile tribe might drive a whole colony for safety to its 
ecclesiastical fort. The bell was hung in the centre of 
the turret, so that the ringer stood below in what would 
now be the aristocratic centre aisle. The material of 
which this ancient meeting-house was composed is some- 
what doubtful, but it probably followed the analogy of 
the common church edifice of remote New England times, 
which had thick log walls, packed with clay, and a roof of 
thatch-work. A little way from this first New Haven 
meeting-house, and almost in the centre of the green, the 
colonists began to bury their dead in a church-yard, which 
ultimately broadened to an area of two acres and a half. 
The pioneer edifice was succeeded by a second meeting- 
house forty-one years later ; by a third in 1757 ; and that 
gave place, in 18 14, to the present "Center Church" 
which is, therefore, the lineal descendant of the original 
structure, preserving in its archives many a record and 
symbol of the past, and with annals so closely woven with 
those of the town that the two are like twin brothers in 
history. The Center Church, indeed, which may more 
fitly be termed the " New Haven meeting-house," is to-day 
something far more than the ecclesiastical home of a 
society which is a synonym for solid wealth and social 
place in a rich New England city ; far more than simply 
a stately old edifice, whose firm brick walls, broad dome, 



AN HISTORIC MEE TING-HO USE. 2 1 5 

and soaring spire are typical expressions of old-fashioned 
church architecture. It is rather a great timepiece of the 
centuries, marking off the hours of history, and recording 
on its ancient dial events that, but for it, might long ago 
have passed into the shadows which, in this swift land of 
ours, so quickly make oblivion. 

Pass into this venerable meeting-house between the 
thick rounded pillars that front its entrance. Over the 
central door-way an arch of marble tablets records briefly 
the coming of the old mercantile colonists, the founding 
of the successive churches, and the naming of the city. 
Within the vestibule another set of tablets is inscribed 
with the names of the dead whose dust lies under the 
building ; for the Center Church is literally founded on its 
own founders, who were laid away in the ancient New 
Haven burying-ground on a part of which the edifice now 
stands. In 18 12, when the cellar for the new church was 
dug, the disturbance of the remains of the fathers of the 
colony almost excited a riot and forced the magistrates to 
protect the laborers. From the vestibule a few steps lead 
downward to the crypt, a subterranean church-yard with- 
out a counterpart on our continent. All the old dirt floor 
has been paved with a thick lining of cement, and out of 
this solid mantle protrude the monuments that mark the 
resting-places where, long ago, the colonists with their 
families were laid away. A sombre sepulchral light steals 
in by day through a few square windows, and even the 
gas-jets, lighted at short spaces, throw over the ancient 



2l6 BY-tVAYS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

Stones a solemn and mortuary gleam. Most of the stones 
are thick, rough slabs of red sandstone, imported originally 
from England, though here and there is a block of mot- 
tled marble from an American quarry. The more ambi- 
tious tokens of the dead are of one invariable pattern — a 
thick slab resting horizontally on massive stone stan- 
chions. The ghastly travesties of winged death's-heads 
and fat burlesques of cherubs with which our sober- 
minded forefathers unconsciously satirized mortality are 
cut boldly on many of the stones, and the quaint inscrip- 
tions, protected now for eighty years from the elements, 
are most of them as clear as when first sunk by the 
graver's tool. In the crypt rests the dust of a hundred 
and thirty-eight old settlers, a small fraction of those who 
lay in the town burying-ground on the Green, which, in 
1823, was levelled off, the stones being removed to a new 
city cemetery. The oldest lettered stone in the crypt is 
that of " Sarah Trowbridge, wife of Thomas Trowbridge," 
who died June 18, 1687 ; but there are other slabs much 
older, the dates on which have been effaced by time. To 
a descendant of that Trowbridge, Mr. Thomas R. Trow- 
bridge, Jr., of New Haven, the church, the city, and all 
lovers of the antique and curious, owe a large debt of 
gratitude for restoring the crypt and opening it to visitors. 
One of the quaintest epitaphs in the ancient burial- 
ground was that over the grave of Theophilus Eaton, who, 
with the Rev. John Davenport, led the New Haven colony 
from Boston and was for nineteen years its governor : 



AN HISTORIC MEETING-HOUSE. 21/ 

Eaton, so famed, so wise, so just. 

The Phoenix of our world, here hides his dust. 

This name forget New England never must. 



To attend you, sir, under these framed stones 
Are come your honored son and daughter Jones, 
On each side to repose their weary bones. 

Governor Eaton and Parson Davenport, whose names 
are both perpetuated by many local titles in New Haven, 
were called the Moses and Aaron of the colony. Daven- 
port left the settlement to become the pastor of the First 
Church at Boston, where he died in 1670 and was laid in 
the tomb of John Cotton. The dust of Eaton rests be- 
neath New Haven Green a few yards from the crypt and 
fifteen feet northwest of the monument of John Dixwell, 
the regicide. As to the regicides, by the way, it is averred 
that the refugee, William Goffe, one of New Haven's 
heroic figures of history, is proved by records of the 
local Historical Society to have been any thing but a 
Scriptural Joseph in his relations with the wife of a prom- 
inent citizen of the early town. 

A modest slab of brown stone in the crypt stands " In 
memory of Mrs. Margaret Arnold, wife of Benedict 
Arnold, who departed this life June 19, 1775, in the 31st 
year of her age." She is described as an exemplary and 
womanly lady, whose gracious qualities, had she lived, 
would have swerved her recreant husband from the in- 
famous act to which his debts and the malign influence 
of his second and Tory spouse impelled him in later years. 



2 1 8 BY-WAYS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

Arnold's old sign-board with its quaint lettering is one of 
the foremost curiosities in the rooms of the New Haven 
Historical Society : 

B. ARNOLD, DRUGGIST ; 

Book Seller, &c. 

FROM LONDON, 

Sibi Totique. 

The traitor, as described by his New Haven contem- 
poraries to graybeards still alive, was a man of slender but 
wiry frame, low stature, quick nervous temperament, and of 
general ill repute for too sharp dealing among his neigh- 
bors. He was a famous skater, and crowds used to gather 
on the wharves in winter to watch his mazy whirls on 
the ice. 

Captain Ezekiel Hays, the great-grandfather of the ex- 
President, lies beneath the foundation of the church, just 
at the edge of the crypt. A stone, a few feet within, 
records the death of his daughter Mary, with an odd 
epitaph annexed which opens with the aspiring lines : 

Awake, my muse, range the wide world of souls 
And seek Maria fled with upward aim. 

As may be noticed, the descendants of Captain Hays 
have eked out his family name with a letter that is com- 
monly supposed by a fastidious posterity to soften the 
bluntness of an ancestral title. The same modern change 
may be observed in the family name of James Pierpont, a 
faithful pastor of the church, who lies in the crypt with 



AN HISTORIC MEE TING-HO USE. 2 1 9 

his three wives and several children, and who was the 
lineal ancestor of the " Pierreponts," of New York, Brook- 
lyn, and elsewhere. A near neighbor of Parson Pierpont, 
in the dust of the crypt, is Pastor Joseph Noyes, who 
piloted his flock through the theological shoals of the New 
Light movement in New England, as the first impulse of 
Methodism was then dubbed. The famous Whitefield, 
when he visited the colonies about 1740, was cordially 
welcomed by this parson and preached in his pulpit. But 
when the great exhorter returned, three years later, he 
was deemed an agent of the adversary and was curtly 
refused the hospitalities of the New Haven meeting-house ; 
so he took a not unseemly revenge by holding a mighty 
meeting of New Lights on New Haven Green, almost 
under the drippings of the sanctuary. 

The stilted diction of mortuary tributes in old times 
appears on the monument of Jared IngersoU, a colonial 
Judge of Admiralty, and " a man of uncommon genius 
which was cultivated by a liberal education and improved 
by the study of mankind, and adapting himself to all by a 
rich variety of sentiment and expression." But, as a rule, 
the inscriptions are graceful and proper, arguing an un- 
common degree of refinement and good taste in the ancient 
New Haven colony. Proving the same local trait, is the 
singular absence from the burial-stones of given names 
adapted from the Christian virtues. Two or three 
"Thankfuls" have been laid away, but without any 
sisterly companionship of Faiths, Hopes, and Charities. 



220 BV-JVAYS OF NATURE AND LIFE, 

But they rest instead with the goodly company of Danas, 
Ingersolls, Lymans, Hillhouses, and Shipmans, whose 
names attest the rich blood that streamed through the 
veins of the old colonists. 

Nor among the silent sleepers in the crypt must we 
omit Hester Coster, who, dying in 1691, left to the church 
that part of the Yale campus on which South College 
now stands. It was in those far-away days a rough lot, 
very like a cow pasture. 

A single name in the auditorium above outweighs all 
those in the dry dust of the crypt. It refers to one justly 
called the Nestor of his church, whose six sons have 
inscribed upon his tablet words almost matchless in their 
beauty and fitness : 

By the Grace of God 
LEONARD BACON 

A servant of Jesus Christ and of all men 
for His sake, here preached the Gospel for 
fifty-seven years. Fearing God and having 
no fear beside, loving righteousness and 
hating iniquity, friend of liberty and law, 
helper of Christian Missions, teacher of 
teachers, promoter of every good work, 
he blessed the city and nation by cease- 
less labors and a holy life, and departed 
peacefully into rest, December 24, 1881, 
leaving the world better for his having 
lived in it. 

Many curious incidents of local history have been 



AN HISTORIC MEE TING-HO USE. 2 2 1 

brought down to us by the Center Church and its prede- 
cessors. While the present structure was building during 
the war of i8 12 the Sound was blockaded by Commodore 
Hardy and his British fleet, which intercepted several craft 
laden with materials for the new house of worship. The 
Commodore partly, no doubt, from chivalrous impulse, 
but more largely by way of sympathetic recognition of 
New Haven's "blue light" Federalism, let the vessels 
go, bidding their captains tell the burghers of the Elm 
City that '' he made no war on religion." Mr. Jeremiah 
Atwater, of New Haven, was in 1787 the contractor for 
the meeting-house that preceded the Center Church. Most 
of his materials had to come from Boston, but nails were 
imported from England in bags. Singularly enough Mr. 
Atwater found that one of these bags inclosed, instead of 
nails, a hundred Spanish silver dollars, probably stored 
away during Europe's troublous wars by some thrifty but 
absent-minded trader. No claimant ever was found for the 
treasure-trove, and Mr. Atwater had it melted up and cast 
into a massive baptismal bowl, eighteen inches in di- 
ameter, which is still used at the christening services of 
the Society. Mr. John Hodson, who died in 1690, and 
who by the very poetry of chance lies under the present 
pulpit, left to the meeting-house of those days five pounds 
sterling to buy a piece of plate. The money was ex- 
changed for a silver tankard with the date and donor's 
name inscribed. The antique vessel is to this day filled 
with the wine at every communion service. Other pieces 



222 BV.PVAVS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

of church plate are dated before 1750. The old church 
itself, during its two centuries and a half of life, has seen 
troublous eras and weathered many a theological and civic 
storm. At the outbreak of the Revolution New Haven 
sentiment was strongly tory, and at a rancorous town- 
meeting held in the building after the battle of Lexing- 
ton, the younger and more ardent patriots of the town 
only succeeded by a majority of one in voting a contin- 
gent for the American army; while, during the trying 
years of bloodshed that followed, Parson Chauncey Whit- 
tlesey needed all his worldly sagacity to keep his flighty 
and errant flock intact. But, through heresy and schism, 
religious and political, the old church has preserved not 
merely its place as a beacon of its faith, but much of its 
traditional character as a sanctified town-hall. There the 
celebrations of peace took place at the close of the 
Revolution and of the War of 1812; there public recep- 
tions have been given to Jackson, Webster, and many 
another historical personage ; there seventy-one classes of 
Yale have been graduated, and ten thousand students 
have received diplomas ; and there meetings of public com- 
memoration, from the first town-gathering two hundred 
and forty-five years ago down to the mournful services for 
Garfield, have been held. 

The earliest records of the New Haven colony prove 
the custom of " dignification " in the meeting-house. The 
term meant, before the innovation of pews, the seating of 
the congregation according to rank. The front seat was 



AN HISTORIC MEETING-HOUSE. 223 

reserved for the governor of the colony and his deputy, in 
the next was seated the magistrate, while succeeding, in 
their order, were the deacons and other pillars of the 
church. Some broader distinctions, however, were ob- 
served ; for single men of ordinary social quality had to 
occupy the cross seats, while the women were put in the 
centre of the church, and the boys in the gallery. The 
dignifying was done by a committee. In later and more 
democratic times the congregations, in rural churches at 
least, were dignified by age, and the committee had a 
peculiarly delicate task in seating those doubtful-aged 
spinsters who had slipped their birthdays. Funeral cus- 
toms also were original. Up to the year 1830 all the 
New Haven bells were tolled for the dead. No hearse 
was used until 1794, and no carriages appeared in line up 
to a much later time. The mourners and friends walked 
to the grave, an act deemed far more solemn and decorous 
than to ride. The pall-bearers, before they began their 
serious journey, were always entertained with a liberal 
lunch, garnished by an abundant supply of strong liquors 
and loaf sugar. An old undertaker, a resident of an 
ancient town in Connecticut, guided not only by his own 
experience, but by knowledge of funeral habitudes before 
him, has given me some particulars of the old-fashioned 
ceremony. The procession was marshaled with the males 
two by two in front of the bier, the females following be- 
hind. The coffin, shrouded in a pall and mounted on a 
bier with legs eighteen inches high, was borne by six 



224 B Y- WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

friends of the dead. At intervals, when the manager of 
the ceremonies gave the signal, the double lines of men 
would pause, the first six men behind would approach and 
take up the bier, the first set of bearers would fall to the 
rear, and the whole procession then proceed. Friends 
dug the grave and filled it after the services ; and it was a 
nice point of mortuary etiquette to shape it as closely as 
might be to the six-sided coffin, which was interred with- 
out any external cover. After the mound had been 
rounded off, the tall bier was placed over it, and there 
it remained in the open air, a ghastly token of death's 
latest mark in the village, until another funeral shifted it 
to a new grave. Ceremonies, however, were often rude 
and informal, and it is related that Parson Judah Cham- 
pion did not scruple to head a procession on horseback, 
bearing to the grave an infant in its coffin laid across the 
saddle. The coffin of the period, save in the case of some 
wealthy member of the community, was built of white- 
wood or butternut, put together with ordinary screws, 
and a rounded tin plate, with painted lettering, recorded 
the name and age of the silent inmate. Occasionally, 
also, the plate would be unscrewed at the grave and kept 
by the bereaved family as a memento. Rites like these 
described, in which the sympathetic offices of friends 
were fitly prominent, appear with some variations to have 
prevailed in many of the old New England parishes ; and 
there is one primitive village in Connecticut where to this 
day the town digs the grave and supplies the hearse for 
rich and poor alike. 



AN HISTORIC MEETING-HOUSE. 225 

How vividly with the recital of these old customs 
memory reverts to the other quaint and fantastic forms 
New England piety took on — to the pastor who could 
hairsplit by the hour 'twixt Free Will and Election, the 
pontifex of the village, infallible in all things sacred and 
most things secular, sometimes a vicarious doctor who in 
the same visit could minister elixirs for the body and the 
soul, often the only lettered citizen of the parish and al- 
ways its social head ; to his odd cross-grained rural flock, 
floundering through snow-drifts to crowd the arctic sanctu- 
ary and, while their bodies froze, warm their souls on fiery 
dogma ; men, serious and reflective, who, to use another's 
phrase, always took up. the poker of life at the red-hot 
end ; to the youngsters of the congregation to whom the 
enduring tortures of the meeting-house seemed a foretaste 
of those eternal penalties so vigorously proclaimed from 
the pulpit ; and to all the other queer outgrowths of that 
pious epoch, the singing-school, equally prolific in discord 
and match-making, and the sewing society which stripped 
character at home while it clothed heathen abroad. All 
these much-mixed and contradictory elements of the old 
New England theocracy, blending intolerance with inde- 
pendence, cramped dogmatism with sublime zeal, and 
domestic severity with neighborly kindness, come again 
luminously to view when we trace up the long line of New 
Haven meeting-houses from the dignified Center Church 
to the sacred block-house on the green. The austere 
fathers of the meeting-house, upon whose dust all around 



226 B Y- WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

the Center Church an unsanctified generation daily treads, 
could they rise in the flesh would perhaps feel like putting 
on corruption anew should they hear an orchestra on 
Commencement Day render the airs of Italian opera in 
the singers' gallery, or find each Sunday in the pulpit, a 
preacher whom even modern orthodoxy has assailed. 
Yet they might perhaps discern, far better than their own 
gloomy subtleties, a sunnier faith, a more cheerful philos- 
ophy, and a broader and brighter theory of peace and good- 
will to men. 



ODDITIES OF FISHCRAFT. 

THERE ought to be some piscatorial maxim to 
express the familiar fact that when the passion for 
fishing is once fairly settled in the angler's soul, it scarcely 
lessens till old age and debility sap his physical powers. 
Moreover, it is a further tribute to the energy of a passion, 
which old Izaak Walton misnamed ''gentle," that it often 
exercises itself in the mere catching of fish. Many an 
angler who can fling out his sixty feet of fly-line, who 
knows every local haunt of the trout, whose creel never 
comes back unfilled, and whose art is perfect, never 
dreams of studying the ways and nature of his speckled 
victims save as that study may minister to his sport. Of 
the species with which his fish are scientifically classified, of 
their normal food, of their occasional erratic habits, he is 
ignorant as the veriest tyro with his alder pole, big line, 
and thumping sinker. It is well for such an angler, if, 
cloyed a little with repetition of sport, he, in later life, be- 
comes more observant of fishy nature ; if now and then he 
dissects the body of a trout, bull-head, or pickerel, watches 
their tricks in and out of the spawning season, and, in fine, 
merges some of the emotions of the mere fish-killer in the 
more exquisite satisfactions of the naturalist. He will in 
the end be pretty certain to discover some traits of the 
227 



228 B y- WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

most common fish which not only add something to sci- 
ence but help to dispel some of the most solidly founded 
fishy illusions. 

That the trout, for example, is the most fastidious of 
fish and also one of the most shy are points which well- 
nigh every work on angling and the fiat of piscatorial lore 
both emphasize. But it is true only up to certain limits. 
The trout when hungry will take almost any thing for a 
dinner. Up in the wilds of Maine, long before the advent 
of the skilled fishermen and the onset of civilization, great 
droves of trout, of from two to four pounds' weight each, 
ran up some of the larger streams. Their numbers pro- 
duced a scarcity of food, and a pioneer fisherman, whose 
word is absolutely trustworthy, relates that on a fallen log 
he has passed over a school of those splendid fellows with- 
out scaring a single one. With alder pole, a strong hook, 
and a strip of pork rind for bait, he used to catch scores 
with such ease that the thing became farcical sport. In 
the famous Nipigon River, above Lake Superior, at certain 
favorable seasons the most killing bait is either a stringy 
section of pork or a strip cut from the scaly side of a chub. 
The trout fastidious! In a single season I have taken 
several gorged with a half-digested yellow snake, half as 
long again as the fish itself. A frog, a toad, a tadpole, or 
a field mouse are occasional food for this king of game 
fish, which come into the experience of any fisher who has 
angled for a series of years. Trout also are cannibals. Up 
in Sullivan County, New York State, a school of trout 



ODDITIES OF FISH CRAFT. 229 

kept in a tank made a royal meal some years ago off the 
entrails and heads of some of their fellows which I had 
taken that day in an adjacent stream. Dissect, some dull 
day in June, the stomach of a large trout caught in still 
water. You will very likely find, besides an assortment of 
moths and water-flies, an adamantine June bug, possibly 
a shiner or chub, and, if the waters abound with them, a 
lizard. Many anglers also have observed, no doubt, that 
early in spring the trout's stomach seems to be filled with 
small corrugated pebbles ; but not every fisherman has 
examined these pebbles closely. Break one in two be- 
tween the fingers and it will be found to contain a sub- 
aquatic worm or larva. But sometimes they are veritable 
stones which, moved hy the current, the fish pirate has 
doubtless mistaken for prey. The stony likeness is the 
result of a secretion which is a provision of nature for 
enabling the larva to escape detection on stony bottoms. 
The reputation of the trout for fastidiousness is due 
largely to the love of the fish for pure waters and dashing 
mountain streams. But even to this rule there are some 
strange and unaccountable exceptions. Not many miles 
from the town of Litchfield, in Connecticut, is a stream 
which has been famous for trout as far back as the 
memory of the oldest resident extends. Along a reach 
of fast water on this brook for some twenty rods above a 
certain ancient sawmill, trout are rarely caught. For some 
forty rods below the structure, however, where the waters 
reek with sawdust and the decaying wood pollutes the 



230 B V- IVA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

bottom, the fish is abundant. Then for a mile the waters 
become clearer, breaking into sparkling falls and into the 
long ripples that the trout loves ; yet along this splendid 
stretch of water trout are so scarce that the angler 
of local experience rarely or never whips it ; and still 
farther down once again the fishing is excellent. These 
zones of poor fishing in the most seemly parts of good 
trout streams are familiar facts to skilled trout-fishers 
everywhere. Some unseen pollution of the bottom or a 
subtle taint of the water is the only suggestion that can 
be offered as the cause. It is also a common fallacy 
that the clearest and purest mountain streams contain the 
best-flavored trout. On the contrary, the mountain trout 
will often be found white and insipid, those caught in 
gently sloping meadows usually surpassing them in color 
and quality ; while the very best trout that I have 
ever known anywhere are found near the largest lake 
in Connecticut and in a stream that descends from it. 
The waters of the lake are rarely clear. They are fed 
from a large area of adjacent swamp, and in the summer 
they are filled with vegetation, which decays and ferments 
until the bottom can be seen at not more than a foot's 
depth. Yet in the stream referred to, filled with this 
pond water, are caught each spring splendid hog-backed 
trout, of the brightest hues, with uncommonly red flesh, 
and of so strong and luscious a savor that no fish of 
the species taken in other streams of the region are 
worthy to be ranked with them. The peculiar food 



ODDITIES OF FISHCRAFT. 23 1 

or habit that gives them their fame and flavor has as yet 
never been hinted at. 

" As shy as a trout " has become a maxim of our 
language. But like most rules this is not without excep- 
tions. In running water the trout is no shyer than other 
fish ; but this, no doubt, is due to the obscuration of 
sight produced by the ripples. In the spring season and 
in still water it is true that the slightest shadow cast 
athwart the surface sends him in a twinkling to his 
lair. As the still water warms in the sun of June or July, 
however, the trout becomes so bold that often he is heed- 
less of a person passing by only a few feet away on 
the bank ; and at this hot season he is often wired by 
unscrupulous fishers with the familiar slip-noose on the 
end of an alder pole. I had, toward the end of June of 
one year, a curious illustration of the erratic summer 
habits of the fish. In the deeper part of a long piece of 
still water I discovered two large trout that had struck up 
companionship with a school of a dozen suckers. These 
suckers, alarmed by my presence, swam together up and 
down the pool, closely accompanied by the trout. The 
aristocratic fish seemed to feel a sense of protection in the 
fellowship of their plebeian brethren, much as a blooded 
king might surround himself with peasant troops on a 
battle-field. These two trout, although I almost snubbed 
their noses with the worm, would not bite that day. But 
a few mornings later, by crawling to the pool I caught 
the larger, weighing three quarters of a pound. A more 



232 BY-PVAYS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

Striking incident, showing how tame the trout sometimes 
becomes in warm summer waters, dates back some twenty 
years, when the writer was a school-boy at the little town 
of Washington in Connecticut. Mr. W. H. H. (Adiron- 
dack) Murray, was at that time pastor of the leading 
church society in the village, and in the infancy of 
his piscatorial fever. Below a dam of the Shepaug River, 
flowing west of the village, early one summer afternoon, 
we found two great trout lying with their heads under 
a stone. They would not take the bait, and finally 
Murray with a noose of small brass wire reached down 
three feet in the water and actually lifted one of the 
fish to an angle of forty-five degrees before he could pass 
the wire above the anal fin. Then he threw the victim 
high in the air and it fell safely on the bank. It was an 
unsportsmanlike business, but the spectacle of a trout 
allowing itself to be almost "stood " on its' head with- 
out taking the alarm was one that the angler will not often 
see rivalled. Another story relating to the summer mad- 
ness of the trout will scarcely be believed, but is un- 
qualifiedly true. Some fifteen years ago I saw a fugitive 
two-ounce trout in water three feet deep take refuge in a 
dark angle between two rocks. I reached in, touched the 
fish, and the next instant felt him run up my sleeve to the 
armpit. To capture him then was merely to lift the 
arm, wade to shore, and drop him out on the sward. 

The ugly bull-head, also dubbed bullpout and catfish, 
seems a sleepy sluggish fish, whose big mouth invites easy 



ODDITIES OF FISHCRAFT. 233 

hooking. ' Though very savory on the table, he is deemed a 
most vulgar fish, and indeed is far from gamesome ; yet 
his big head contains some refined brain lobes. In June, 
after his young are hatched, he leads them out in a 
black swarm, pilots them to feeding grounds, and watches 
them with fatherly solicitude. One may see the bull-head, 
when thus in charge of his infant flock, act exactly after 
the fashion of a partridge, who, with much fluttering and 
simulating of a wounded bird, leads the pursuer away 
from her brood ; just so the bull-head will swim away, at 
first slowly, then faster and faster, to draw away the 
foe. The horn which, like the boom of a sail, fringes 
the bull-head's pectoral fin, is a genuine curiosity. When 
raised for defence it stands out so inflexibly that the 
strongest pressure by the thumb will scarcely force it 
down again. If the root of this horn is dissected it 
will be seen how shrewdly nature has devised it as a 
weapon of attack and defence ; for at the bottom is a 
flange which, when acted on by particular muscles, 
travels around a long curve until it falls into a niche 
of bone where it stands fast and immovable against the 
foe. Though the bull-head is reckoned a nocturnal fish and 
really seeks his prey at night, it is not commonly known 
that the best time for taking him is at high noon on a 
sunny summer's day. Then the hated sunlight drives 
him to the deepest mud bottoms of his pond. If those 
mid-day abodes can once be found and the anchor rope 
is long enough, one can catch scores of the fish with 



234 B Y- WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

absolute certainty. A trick in catching him both by 
night and day is worth knowing. A friend who once had 
occasion to study the habits of a bull-head that was 
confined in a tank with a mud bottom, observed that 
the fish would often follow up the trail in the mud left 
by an angle worm thrown in for food. Sometimes, fif- 
teen minutes after the worm had been dropped and 
after it had made a trail three feet long, the fish would 
cross the little furrow, then, turning as abruptly as a 
sleuth-hound, follow up the track, and secure the wrig- 
gling prey. Ever since that my friend has practised 
with immense success the device of a long throw with 
a well-leaded line, which, drawn slowly along the lake 
bottom, leaves a track which no bull-head ever crosses 
and leaves behind. Curiously enough, although our 
Northern bull-head is a bottom fish, the larger Southern 
catfish swims by day near the surface and often breaks 
water. In the St. John's River, near Jacksonville, Fla., 
where catfish are called " kitties," they may be seen 
weighing a dozen pounds each, swimming in the sunlight 
with dorsal fin above water, and every few minutes lashing 
the surface into a miniature Maelstrom with their big tails. 
But of all fresh-water fish the pickerel is most para- 
doxical and singular as to some of his traits. The 
greyhound of our rivers, no fish living matches him in the 
speed with which when frightened he can dart through 
the waters. Yet lying perfectly still, ruminating along the 
edge of some shady water-nook, he may be touched almost 



ODDITIES OF FISH CRAFT. 235 

with the hand before he takes flight. Some incidents to 
prove his comprehensive and enduring appetite will, I fear, 
make the voracity of the fish discount the veracity of the 
writer. Nevertheless they are rigidly true. Stand- 
ing knee-deep in water, I have known pickerel to pass 
between my legs in pursuit of the bait. I have seen them 
take a big shiner when gorged with protruding fish almost 
half as large as themselves ; to seize fiercely a new bait 
just after breaking successively two snells which were 
afterward found in the mouth with their two hooks and 
baits attached ; to swallow snakes, frogs, mice, and any 
living thing not too vast that has come within reach of 
their insatiable maws. The pickerel is an inveterate can- 
nibal, and an oblong slice from the stomach of one of its 
own kind is a most dainty and taking bait. Fishy as 
sound some of the newspaper stories of pickerel gorged 
and strangled in the attempt to swallow a big victim, 
there can be no doubt that many of them are trust- 
worthy. A single reminiscence may be cited to prove 
the pickerel's gullibility and appetite. Some ten years 
ago I caught one of these fish, landing him on a smooth 
grassy shore, ten feet from the edge. In taking him off, 
he broke the line just above the sinker, which was some 
two feet from the hook. As the broken snell was some- 
what frayed, I replaced it, and while doing so the fish 
flopped into a musk-rat hole, which had one of its ex- 
tremities under the bank at the river's edge. Presently 
Mr. Pickerel appeared in the stream, trailing two feet 



236 B y- IVA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

of snell and the lead. He instantly took a second bait 
and was readily landed again. That rash pickerel had 
been dancing for fully a minute on the grass and had 
found his way through a dark hole for ten feet to the 
stream, not to speak of his other enlivening, though not 
instructive experiences. I have also caught a dozen 
handsome pickerel in a small river pool in which some 
youngsters were bathing, the fish shooting freely into 
the muddy water among the sportive lads, to snap the 
bait. Any angler experienced in pickerel fishing can no 
doubt recall similar incidents without straining credulity 
half as hard as this fresh-water shark sometimes strains 
his gullet. 



AMONG THE MANIACS. 

ON the western edge of the city of Utica, in the State 
of New York, capping a sloping ridge of land, 
stands the great State Asylum for the Insane. It is a 
grand structure, fronted by a graceful row of massive 
pillars and flanked by wings several hundred feet long, 
which stretch backward enclosing a broad area of court- 
yard. All around are open grounds with curved lawns 
and pretty clumps of trees, forming altogether a lovely 
park, the boast and delight of Utica residents. There, 
within the walls, year after year more than six hundred 
patients are under treatment. They come from all grades 
of life and from every trade and profession. Some 
remain for years with intellects clouded up to the day 
when they enter the scarcely deeper shadows of the 
grave ; others, perhaps needing only rest, stay but a few 
days, then return to active life. The institution is like 
a vast hospital in the variety and scope that one finds 
in mental disease, and it reveals to the visitor strange 
and sad sights. It needs some nerve and not a little 
inquisitiveness to make the four hours' trip through the 
long corridors and wards, even though the constant pres- 
ence of a member of the asylum staff assures safety. 
First, at the suggestion of the doctor guide, comes a 
237 



238 B y. IVA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

glance at the office of the institution, where each case as 
it arrives is noted, the diagnosis of the patient made out, 
and, so far as may be, a thorough record obtained of past 
symptoms of the incomer's disease. A large room 
crowded with volumes relating to nervous diseases here 
arrests attention. It almost travesties human knowledge 
to look upon this huge array of literature and then reflect 
how little is really known as yet about those subtle dis- 
orders of the brain which bring their victims by the hun- 
dred here. " Perhaps we should know more if the books 
were fewer," pointedly remarks the doctor as he takes up 
his bunch of keys preparatory to our weird journey. Now 
is your opportunity to catch a hasty view of the doctor 
himself in his official personality. He is a man some five 
feet eight inches in height, weighing perhaps a hundred 
and forty pounds, of quiet bearing and with just a trace of 
accent bespeaking his English race. But his well-knit 
figure betrays latent muscular strength, and under his 
glasses his restless eye, which seems to look in all direc- 
tions at once, proves the keen habit of observancy bred by 
long years in the Asylum. You can but mark, too, an 
occasional nervous quickness of movement, and as he 
opens the door of a ward he always darts through, leav- 
ing myself and a comrade, an old college mate, to follow 
at our leisure. This comrade, by the way, on this occa- 
sion wore an overcoat of mild green tint and was conse- 
quently dubbed " Saint Patrick " by one of the lunatics 
whom we met later during our rounds. 



AMONG THE MANIACS. 239 

Presently we reach a stout oaken door, self-locking, 
like all the ward doors of the institution. The doctor 
turns his key, and in a moment we stand in the vestibule 
of madness. It is a great corridor, impressing one in- 
stantly by its magnificent length and width. Its floors 
are polished until they give back our shadows. Pictures 
hung on the neat walls give a tone of pleasant domes- 
ticity, and through the side doors are caught glimpses of 
sleeping-rooms that are the very pink of cleanliness. 
" This," says the doctor, " is the ward for slightly insane 
or convalescent women," and indeed, the patients sitting 
around the corridor in their arm-chairs, conning books or 
magazines, and answering with quiet coherency the doc- 
tor's questions, are the last people we should suspect of 
lunacy. But with sharp eyes the morbid signs may be de- 
tected. A strange look out of the corner of the eye, a 
restless jerk, now and then a tinge of languor or melan- 
choly, and almost universally a pallor of the skin, disclose 
the occult mental humor. Sometimes, too, even in this 
ward, does the mania cunningly concealed break forth 
in raving, and a victim seemingly almost well becomes 
suddenly a human demon — so deceptive are the phases of 
insanity, and so infinite and trying the forms of quick 
madness that the poor demented brain takes on. 

" Here," says the doctor, as turning his key we enter a 
large oblong room, "is the melancholia ward." The 
place, like its predecessor, is neat and tidy and with the 
same bright floors, but its walls are more poorly fitted and 



240 By.fVAVS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

less adorned. Large arm-chairs placed near the walls in 
single rows are filled, most of them, with silent female 
figures. These women are in every attitude of profound 
depression, and each has her hallucination over some past, 
present, or impending sorrow. One looks straight ahead 
with fixed gaze, refusing any reply to the doctor's queries. 
Another raises moist eyes and answers with sad voice, but 
quite coherently. Some sit for hours bent forward face on 
hands ; others leaning sideways and resting on one arm 
weep silently. In the corner is a plainly-dressed old lady 
seventy-five or eighty years old, but still with a keen in- 
tellectual face. You ask her a simple question and she 
answers with a brutal oath. The most horrible delusions 
harass these poor creatures and are as real to them as the 
actual events of every-day life to the sane. They have 
lost their all, a dear friend is dying, calling to them for 
aid, they are condemned to die and ere long are to be ex- 
ecuted — these are some of the more common delusive 
fancies. A great proportion of the inmates of the asylum 
pass first or last through this abode of gloom, and out of 
four hundred and twelve admitted in 1882 one hundred 
and thirty were victims of different forms of melancholy. 
This stage of insanity often lapses into violent madness, 
and is peculiarly marked by the suicidal impulse frequently 
veiled under a deceit so cunning that the utmost watch- 
fulness of the nurse fails to thwart it. Another sad sug- 
gestion presents itself in connection with this form of 
mental disorder. The figures quoted above show that 



AMONG THE MANIACS. 24 1 

more than thirty per centum of the patients admitted last 
year were afflicted with melancholia. Necessarily many 
of these initial cases at their most important stage have to 
be treated together and under the morbid influence which 
a group of despondent lunatics reflect on one another ; 
nor, with the necessarily limited resources granted them 
by legislatures, is it possible to see how our public insti- 
tutions for the insane can escape the evil. Yet this, on 
the other hand, is peculiarly the class of lunatics who, 
kept too long at home by the misguided tenderness of 
relatives, perpetrate very often child-murder and suicide 
in one bloody act. They are dangerous if kept in the 
household, while the State, without unendurable taxa- 
tion, cannot provide them with isolated quarters and 
separate treatment. From this single example we may 
realize both how bitter may be the visitation of insanity 
in the homes of the poor and how difiicult is the general 
problem of managing a great asylum of the State. 

Now we approach the door which opens into the mania- 
cal or, as it is termed at the asylum, the " disturbed " 
ward for women. Ere we reach it there comes a startling 
medley of sounds beyond the thick oak. A chattering of 
loud human voices blends with shrieks, imprecations, and 
wild appeals. We enter. The room is larger than most 
of the wards, better lighted, and with the same rows of 
chairs set around the walls. Not more than half of the 
seats are occupied, for thronging the floor is a crowd of 
creatures whom one almost hesitates to describe as human 



242 B Y. WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

beings. They rather seem unsexed demons dressed in the 
rough garb of woman. Their dishevelled locks, their hor- 
rible contortions of the face, frantic gestures, and unearthly- 
yells, give one for an appalling moment a realistic vision 
of pandemonium. One of the demons dashes across the 
floor back and forth, stamping her foot and striking at im- 
aginary fiends. Another, struggling in the hands of two 
nurses, madly implores our aid. Half a dozen flock round 
to shake our hands and pour out stories of their woes. 
One thrusts with cunning leer into my hand, while the 
doctor's back is turned, a roll of torn newspaper which, to 
her distorted mind, contains a recital of her wrongs. A 
thick-set, powerful creature, who says she is the Holy 
Ghost, imprecates all sorts of curses upon us, while an- 
other on her knees begs to be taken back to friends. One 
screaming girl rushes to the door to bar our exit, and as 
the nurses draw her away, struggles desperately to return. 
But no picture of details can do half justice to the scene 
as a whole — to the mass of frenzied furies, the discord of 
fearful sounds, and the awful impression of something 
weird and unearthly which oppresses the visitor as he 
gazes on the scene. 

Then the doctor addresses a lunatic better behaved and 
more subdued than her wild mates. She is a gray-haired 
woman who bears in one hand a torn copy of the Bible, in 
the other a rolled-up newspaper. She is, he explains to 
us later, a preacher's wife once of great capabilities as a 
church worker, and so gifted as an exhorter that her hus- 



AMONG THE MANIACS. 243 

band often used to allow her to take his place in the pul- 
pit. " Will you recite to the gentlemen ' The Sword of 
Bunker Hill ' ? " asks the doctor. She consents, and then, 
the doctor leading by the arm a maniac who had been 
fighting her nurses, we all go into a large adjacent sleep- 
ing-chamber where the yells cannotr penetrate. Here the 
old woman begins her recitation. The first few lines are 
in the words of the original piece. But presently she be- 
gins to extemporize, depicting in prose of most amazing 
vividness and power the rise of the old man from his bed, 
his call for his sword, his orders to the troops, and his call 
to them to " charge." Of course she gets history and 
every thing else distorted, but the beauty and force of her 
extemporized speech are marvellous — for she never re- 
cites in the same words. Then, at the doctor's order, she 
opens the window and counts the dead as realistically as 
though she actually sees them on the green lawn. Her 
voice has the volume of a bull's lungs, and sinks to the 
lowest masculine bass. Meanwhile the other and more 
violent maniac has thrown herself on a bed still screaming. 
But at a momentary allusion to the Bible by the reciter, 
her shouting comrade cries out : " Oh, I believe in that 
sacred book and I will die in its faith ! " then bursts into 
tears, becomes as quiet and docile as a child, and is led 
back without a struggle to the nurses, whom five minutes 
before she was fighting tooth and nail. Nothing can be 
more curious than these sudden changes in the temper of 
the violently insane, wrought by some simple word 
or act. 



244 By.PVAVS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

What a life must the nurses live in such a Bedlam — 
compelled to stay with the maniacs for five and a half 
days each week, during night and day, and forced con- 
stantly to watch, restrain, and care for this company of 
human furies ! Not more than three nurses seemed em- 
ployed in the ward of twenty or thirty maniacs ; yet I am 
assured by a nurse, who for some years had the care of 
the violent ward of a New England State asylum, that the 
general charge of a body of maniacs is less onerous than 
the special care of one maniacal patient who must be 
closely and personally attended. Let me use substantially 
her own words in describing her experience : " We out- 
live quickly most of our fear of our patients, for we 
know by a peculiarity in the eye of each one when a dan- 
gerous outbreak is at hand ; and finally we reach so cal- 
lous a stage that sane people outside seem for the time 
lunatics, while the maniacs seem sane." 

Next the doctor leads us to a second long corridor, 
where dwell those whose minds are darkened for life. 
Many of these wretched and hopeless victims carry the 
most extraordinary delusions. Sometimes the same hal- 
lucination lasts for years, then changes in an instant to a 
fresh one, which may continue many years more. In 
other patients the fancies succeed each other as rapidly 
as thought can flit through their frenzied brains. One 
woman in this ward refuses to let her pulse be felt, and 
associates any attempt to do so with an effort to take her 
life. Another tells us : " In 1862 I gave orders that every 



AMONG THE MANIACS. 245 

criminal in this country should be brought before me and 
shot. God warned the American people to obey my 
orders, but they refused. Ere long, therefore, God will 
slaughter this whole nation, and that beautiful lawn out 
there will reek with blood." Another assured us that she 
was the wife of our doctor guide. " Does he make you a 
good husband ? " I asked. " Well," was the reply, " only 
so-so ; but I 'm getting him in trim, and soon hope to 
quite reform him," and the laugh this time was on the 
doctor. A Utica lady, who some years ago went the 
rounds of the asylum, tells of a patient who always took 
care of her own room, would never allow even the doctor 
to enter it, and, while keeping every thing as neat as wax, 
refused to set any thing in order. She was an excellent 
painter, and once passed out from her room for inspection 
a pretty picture of tree-boughs supporting a bird's nest 
with four eggs in it. "You have got that picture wrong," 
remarked one of the doctors. " Don't you see that if you 
turn it upside down, the eggs will fall out ? " " Why, 
that 's so," answered the patient ; " I must change it so 
that the eggs will stay in." In the ward for demented 
males we found an odd character whose hobby was social 
philosophy, and who divided mankind into two classes— 
"moral destructionists and moral preservationists." His 
definition of life,— " Existence under two sexes,"— if 
original, would do credit to a saner mind. This fellow 
talked quite rationally on his pet theme ; but the moment 
he left it, drifted into insane twaddle. In connection with 



246 BY-H^AYS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

this matter of delusions of the demented, reference 
may be made to a case in the Michigan Asylum at 
Pontiac in that State. As the story is related, Governor 
Jerome, of Michigan, was visiting the institution, when a 
patient, suddenly confronting him, said : " Do you know 
who I am ? I 'm the future husband of Queen Victoria. 
She 's coming over to marry me in a fortnight. Now, 
Governor, do you know how we are going to make our 
wedding tour ? We intend to have a railroad built in a 
straight line from here to Portland, Maine. Then the 
Queen and I will get on a splendid saloon car, which is to 
be run with constantly increasing velocity until at Port- 
land it reaches a speed of two hundred miles an hour. It 
will run, without slackening speed, on a ferry-boat waiting 
at Portland, and the boat will then be driven by the mo- 
mentum straight across the ocean to England." 

The male wards at the Utica Asylum are much less 
interesting than those for the female patients. The men 
seemed to have fewer odd fancies than the women, and, 
in the disturbed ward, were much less noisy and violent. 
In this disturbed male ward we were shown a patient in a 
short canvas sack, laced behind the back, and with long 
sleeves reaching far beyond the hands and also tied be- 
hind. " Loosen him," said the doctor to the two stalwart 
attendants. It was done, and in an instant the maniac 
had rent his underclothing, and in a moment more would 
have been stark naked but for the interference of the men 
in charge. The trip through this disturbed male ward, 



AMONG THE MANIACS. 247 

with a crowd of the strong lunatics pattering on a few 
feet behind the visitor, is a severe test for weak nerves. 

A peculiarly interesting ward is that for the victims of 
"paresis," a disease of the brain marked by the inability 
of the patient to pronounce the labial consonants, and 
certain to result in death in a period varying from a few 
weeks to several years. " Pronounce parallelopipedon," 
was the doctor's order to one of the victims, answered by 
a reply reminding one of a drunkard in his cups. The 
paresis patients are usually in good spirits and well- 
behaved, but occasionally suffer violent outbreaks and 
have to be restrained by the strait-jacket, or what is 
said to be the only other form of discipline at the asylum, 
known somewhat widely as the " Utica crib." This crib is 
merely a large crib bedstead, very strong, and with a mas- 
sive slat cover closing down upon it enclosing the frenzied 
patient. The victim lies on a mattress, with bed-clothing, 
but is allowed ample room to turn over, and suffers no 
more real discomfort than if in an ordinary bed. 

After all has been said and done, how imperfect at the 
best must be this necessary treatment of the poor insane 
in a great asylum at public expense — treatment always 
en masse, with an insufficient force of underpaid nurses, 
who are expected to serve in a pandemonium at fifteen 
dollars a month and board, tending violent and homicidal 
fiends with the patience of a stoic and the skill of a modern 
trained nurse; the institution itself perhaps crippled by 
the whims of Legislatures and compelled to do its poor 



248 B y- IVA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

best with resources wretchedly inadequate. It may not 
be generally known, by the way, that the curability of the 
insane is greatly over-estimated. Doctor Pliny Earle, 
superintendent of the State Asylum at Northampton, 
Mass., who has probably given this subject more attention 
than any living American, quotes with his own approval 
these words of an English authority : " In round numbers, 
of ten persons attacked by insanity five recover and five 
die sooner or later during the attack. Of the five who 
recover, not more than two remain well during the rest 
of their lives ; the other three sustain subsequent attacks 
during which at least two of them die." In other words, 
only one out of five insane persons makes a permanent re- 
covery. I did not know of these sinister statistics, when, a 
little while ago, we passed out between the massive columns 
of the Utica Asylum. But even then the great structure 
seemed, as kindred institutions must ever seem to me 
hereafter, the tomb of the better part of man ; while its 
fair lawns and encircling sun-lit trees appeared counter- 
parts of the greenery with which modern fashion at burials 
sometimes hides the grim edges of a newly dug grave. 



SILVER SPRING. 

ON the western bank of the St. John's River, about 
twenty-six miles above Palatka, Florida, there 
comes a little break in the long line of tropical woods. This 
gap is the mouth of the Oklawaha River, which has its 
source in Silver Spring, one hundred and ten miles to the 
westward. These miles, as given, measure, not the distance 
on the map, but the windings of the stream, which twists 
and doubles back like a snake, taking up three crooked 
miles for each straight one overland. Up the Oklawaha 
during the winter months of active tourist travel there 
plies a little steamer which carries its passengers to Silver 
Spring, where they take the cars to Palatka or reverse the 
journey. 

The voyage on the Oklawaha of a day and a night, 
from Palatka to Silver Spring, is one full of new experi- 
ences for the tourist, however much he may have trav- 
elled. The little steamer that takes him is probably 
without a mate or match among the water-craft of the 
world as respects its nautical structure. It is some fifty 
feet long, with high upper works, the plan of which is 
something midway between a canal-boat and Noah's Ark. 
The wheel, not more than two feet broad and a dozen 
feet in diameter, is set into the boat's stern, striking the 
249 



250 BY-PVAVS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

water with shallow blades which always play above the 
flat bottom of the craft. Beyond the wheel project two 
broad rudders united by iron rods so as to work together. 
The boat draws about two feet of water, and her hybrid 
model has proved to be the only kind fitted for naviga- 
tion of the snaky Oklawaha. With her twin rudders she 
can turn in twice her own length ; her crew think nothing 
of a bump against the bank or on a bar, for she is readily 
pushed off ; and, queerest of all, with her elevated prow 
she runs fearlessly over huge logs which float within an 
inch or two of the surface. They rasp and groan as they 
grate along the much-battered bottom, but as they pass 
below her wheel they leave her without substantial injury. 
One can look the world over before he finds a craft like 
this that jumps logs like a race-horse and takes bump 
after bump with cool unconcern. 

The water journey up the river is made through the 
depths of a moss-hung tropical forest growing in the 
swamp, with only two or three landings at small settle- 
ments to break the routine. But the bends in the 
stream, the sylvan vistas with their streaming pendants 
of hoary moss, the strange tree forms and vegetation on 
the banks, and the animal life of the stream lend constant 
variety and change to the voyager's eye. Even in the 
winter flowers give color to the weedy banks. The water- 
lettuce, a plant like the Northern edible, which grows 
floating in the stream, drifts by in shoals. The remoter 
banks are verdant with Southern evergreens, magnolia, 



SILVER SPRING. 2$ I 

live oak, and mangrove, interspersed with the great 
cypresses, which have singular wooden cones, called 
locally " knees," springing from the roots. The trees 
are covered with a singular growth called the air-plant, 
resembling the tops of the pineapple. These air-plants 
drop their seeds in the interstices and crotches of the 
trees, taking root there, and thus getting their appro- 
priate name. A common growth very strange to the 
Northern eye is the palmetto, most tropical of tree types, 
which along the Oklawaha springs up in groves, in which 
are some individual trees seventy feet high, straight as a 
cane, and without a limb up to the luxuriant tuft that 
crowns the shaft. Fish dart among the lily-pads, and 
ducks or long-legged cranes, startled by the boat, fly into 
the forest or up stream ; while on sunny days the alli- 
gator is often to be seen basking on the sloping logs. 
At night, when these wild, mossy vistas are lighted by 
pine knots, blazing in an iron cage on the pilot-house, the 
spectacle has a weird beauty that defies metaphor. With 
the electric light, which erelong will probably supersede 
the yellow pine flame, these Oklawaha glades by night 
will be an even finer spectacle. When about six miles 
from Silver Spring, the boat enters Silver Run, which 
comes directly from the spring, and the opaque waters of 
the swamp are changed suddenly for that beautifully 
clear fluid to be described hereafter. Every living thing 
below of plant and fish life, the black catfish, the sharp- 
nosed gar-pike, bass, and other fish become as clearly 



252 BY-IVAYS OF NATURE AND LIFE, 

outlined as in air; and bending over the rail the scene 
in the deep waters below is an endless panorama of 
interest and beauty. Silver Run, though often not more 
than thirty feet wide, is of immense depth, sometimes 
reaching fifty feet, and averaging at least ten. Just before 
one reaches it on the Oklawaha, the boat passes through 
the "Gates," two trees opposite each other on the 
banks, and so near that the hybrid craft barely scrapes 
between. 

Silver Spring, the basin where the Oklawaha has its 
source, is probably, regarded merely as to size, the larg- 
est spring in the world. I have measured with some care 
the amount of water which pours from it into Silver Run, 
its outlet. A cross-section of the stream would probably 
average sixty feet wide and ten deep all the way across, 
with a current flowing some two miles an hour, often, 
however, becoming so swift that it boils in surges. In 
the centre the channel of Silver Run probably averages 
twenty feet, and but for its bends a good-sized ocean 
steamer could navigate the stream from its source to its 
end. All this vast volume of running water comes from 
the spring, whose only inlets are at the bottom. The 
spring itself is an oblong basin, covering about two acres. 
At its upper end is a sudden depression of the bottom, 
which forms a kind of sub-aqueous cliff of horseshoe 
shape. The bottom, to describe it more figuratively, falls 
away into the figure of a round clam-shell placed on its 
convex side ; only, to make the figure complete, there 



SILVER SPRING. 253 

must be imagined ten feet of water over the '* hinge " 
part of the shell, which at that point descends suddenly in 
a watery precipice twenty-five feet deeper, and out of a 
vast hole under the precipice, and unseen by the eye, 
pours the immense stream of water by which the spring 
and its outlet are fed. The size of this mysterious hole 
never will be known — unless explored by divers — for the 
overhanging cliff covers it. But it can scarcely be less 
than ten feet in diameter, and is probably much larger. 

Popular fallacies in regard to wonders like Silver Spring 
will always be found to increase inversely as the distance 
from them. The nearer a Florida native lives to the 
spring the greater his exaggerations. I found no one at 
the spring who estimated the depth in the horseshoe de- 
pression at less than sixty feet. By many careful sound- 
ings I found its maximum depth to be thirty-seven feet, 
and average depth about thirty. 

The most wonderful property of Silver Spring is the 
transparency of its waters. The bottom, at its greatest 
depth of thirty-seven feet, is outlined with a clearness 
which takes away completely the sense of an intervening 
fluid. Floating in a boat and gazing downward, it is hard 
at first to overcome the illusion that one is falling. Every 
little leaf, each branch of the waving water-plants, all the 
little sand-banks, are defined with absolute distinctness. 
The mystic gorge from which the water pours, and a tree 
which has fallen in it, startle the eye by their realism. 
Strange and beautiful optical illusions are created by this 



254 BY-IFAVS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

translucent fluid, compared with which the famous waters 
of Lake George are positively opaque. A piece of tin, 
a shell, or any other bright object becomes opalescent, 
the edges fringed with deep blue. Where the water is 
really thirty feet deep, it seems as if a ten-foot pole would 
readily touch bottom, and the rifts of sand, filling the 
crevices of rock, reflect a thousand iridescent tints as the 
rays of light touch the grains at different angles. Fish, 
of which there are many in the pool, appear like birds in 
the air, moving on impalpable wings. By careful experi- 
ments on a still, bright day, it has been found that, 
looking vertically downward, letters on sunken cards can 
be read at just about the same distance as in the atmos- 
phere above. 

The waters of Silver Spring preserve a very even tem- 
perature, rarely rising above seventy-six degrees Fahren- 
heit, and almost never falling below seventy-two. To the 
hand the water feels like that of a country lake in mid- 
summer, and bathing in it during midwinter is not uncom- 
mon, and is described as a most delightful sensation. So 
warm is the spring that its water has to be cooled before 
it is fit to drink. As it is strongly charged with a solution 
of the limestone from which it emerges, the water is hard ; 
but when drunk it has the tasteless quality of the purest 
water. The warmth of the spring in contrast with the at- 
mosphere was strikingly demonstrated during one morn- 
ing of my stay, when the mercury sank almost to the 
freezing-point and the surface of the great basin steamed 
like a hot caldron. 



SILVER SPRING. 255 

There is much obscurity as to the origin of the wonder- 
ful spring. Some people conceive that it starts from far 
down in the earth's bowels, and that thus its high tem- 
perature is accounted for. Springs resembling it in some 
general features, though much smaller in size, are found 
a few miles away, indicating either an extensive subterra- 
nean reservoir under pressure or a system of large streams 
under the earth. In several places in the neighborhood, 
not many miles off, are rough holes nine or ten feet deep, 
down which the visitor can descend to large running 
streams of water clear as that of Silver Spring. These 
streams pass over the bottom of the sink-holes, then into 
the earth again, only a small surface being visible. An- 
other theory is that Silver Spring is supplied by under- 
ground outlets of several clear lakes ten or fifteen miles 
off. One of these lakes, however, has within a few years 
trebled in size and depth, indicating that its hidden outlet 
has been obstructed ; yet no effect has been observed on 
the waters of Silver Spring, which never vary up and 
down more than two feet, and are highest in the rainy 
season. Besides the mysterious hole at its head, there are 
a number of other large inlets at the bottom of the basin, 
which are marked by the bars of beautiful opalescent sand 
which they emit ; and all along Silver Run, for six miles, 
similar reaches of sand show that it is partly supplied with 
springs of its own, independent of the head-waters. One 
of these subterranean inlets, just below the place where 
the run leaves Silver Spring, is no small curiosity. Twenty 



256 B V. fVA VS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

feet down in the clear waters is the opening of a rough 
chasm, out of which the waters pour at a rate that causes 
a very perceptible surge on the surface. According to 
local belief and assertion, the bottom of this chasm is 
eighty-five feet below the surface. I sounded it many 
times with the utmost care, and found it only forty-one 
feet deep, making the bottom of the chasm proper twen- 
ty-one feet below the surrounding level of the bottom of 
the Run. Still farther down stream are a curious system 
of round subaqueous well-holes. Their tops are about 
seven feet below the surface of the water, and their bot- 
toms, as sounded, about eighteen feet farther down. All 
this curious system of chasms and well-holes goes to prove 
an immense underlying stratum of easily disintegrated 
limestone extending for many miles and ramified by 
numerous water-channels. 

Silver Spring abounds in fish, and dozens at a time can 
be seen in its pure waters. At certain seasons, usually in 
spring-time, they bite freely at bait, but they are usually 
too sophisticated for the ordinary hook. The routine of 
fishing here, one day during my stay, was varied by a new 
sort of bite. A large tame duck, of a species that can fly 
almost as well as its wild fellows, seized a bait attached to 
a line and rod on the wharf, got well hooked, and quack- 
ing with fright, flew across the waters, dragging the long 
attachment behind in most comic fashion. Fortunately 
for the victim, the pole caught a fisherman's boat, and the 
bird was drawn in and released. The local fishermen take 



SILVER SPRING. 2 $7 

advantage of the clearness of the water to kill fish in a 
most unsportsmanlike manner. A barbed spear and a 
thin pole fifteen feet long are hung to a cord of equal 
length or longer, noosed around the wrist. This cruel 
spear is flung after practice with wonderful precision, and 
even small fish — always hard to spear — are slaughtered 
when swimming at great depths. 

Like almost every wonder of nature on our continent, 
Silver Spring has its Indian legend. Tradition tells how, 
far back in the shadow-land of history, Wenonah, the 
beauty of the tribe that dwelt around the spring, won the 
love of Chullotah, chief of a hostile tribe, and her father's 
deadly foe ; how the angry father — with a Florida name 
too polysyllabic to spell out here — sought out and slew 
the lover ; and how then Wenonah drowned herself in the 
crystal depths, where the long-waving weeds still symbolize 
her hair, and the opalescent sands betoken the broken 
shells of her coronet. But Silver Spring needs no legend- 
ary attractions to make it both beautiful and marvellous ; 
though a jewel so literally of the first water deserves a 
fairer setting than the low gloomy swamp and thin row 
of gaunt trees that surround it. 



CATCHING THE GRAYLING. 

AN area of ten counties in the northeastern corner of 
the southern peninsula of Michigan may — though 
on a much more ample scale — be likened to the Adiron- 
dack region of New York State. The tract includes a 
region of not less than eight thousand square miles, or 
nearly twice the area of Connecticut. Where it abuts on 
Lake Huron this wild country includes a few thriving 
lumber towns, visited daily by the lake steamers ; but in 
the interior all the primitive roughness remains. Vast 
sand tracts covered by scrawny oaks and underbrush are 
succeeded by hills crested with pine. Then come tangled 
forests of mixed growths or dense cedar swamps, almost 
impassable even to the foot of the hardened backwoods- 
man. You may travel for dozens of miles without seeing 
a house or other sign of human habitation, and whole 
counties in some instances contain only a few hundred 
settlers altogether and not a single village worth the 
name. Intricate systems of rivers, well stocked with trout 
and grayling, intersect the wilderness and find their way 
in crazy crookedness to the great lakes. 

A long voyage by skiff down one of these streams for 
one hundred and fifty miles was recently finished by two 
of us at Bamfield's on the Au Sablp River. For three 
258 



CATCHING THE GRAYLING. 259 

days our water journey, with occasional stops for fishing, 
took us down the boiling current through primeval woods, 
along swift rapids, and amid scenes so rugged and solitary 
that all consciousness of civilization was lost, and only the 
yell of the red Indian and the curling smoke of some dis- 
tant wigwam was needed to complete the sense of isolation 
and wildness. 

No pen can depict justly the sensation with which one 
begins thus his first voyage on an unknown stream, with- 
out guide or even tent for shelter, in a region far remote 
from home, and with a fair forecast of peril from rapids, 
rocks, and snags. With a few strokes of the paddle all 
traces of mankind are lost to the eye. The whirr of the 
distant sawmill still strikes the ear, and the pufT of the 
locomotive penetrating the solitude reminds you for half 
an hour that there is an outer world of human industry. 
But all else is merged in the solemn silences of a wilder- 
ness so dense that the mid-day sun scarcely shines through 
the trees. Gradually but surely, all sombreness wears 
away in the charms of isolation, and there succeeds a 
perfect exultation of loneliness. Now, with paddle laid 
by, you yield the skiff to the current, to study the sur- 
roundings. Below is a stream fit for the drink of the gods. 
Its waters are like liquid sunshine in clearness and purity. 
Still farther below is a panorama of endless loveliness of 
river bottom. Sometimes it shows a reach of white sand 
rising suddenly almost to the floating keel or sinking to 
dark depths. Next, as the soil changes, comes a long bed 



26o B y. fVA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

of many-hued pebbles, rounded by the wearing waters, 
until one seems drifting over a clean cobble pavement. 
Then again sweeps into view a floor of long grasses sway- 
ing snake-like in the current, or a matted bed of boughs 
with every twig as clearly outlined as if on the green 
branches above. The shore, too, has its infinite variety 
of scenic nature. Dead trees, loaded with parasites, 
whose foundations have been loosed by the current, 
bend down till their boughs sweep the waters, or some 
giant pine, felled by an old storm, bridges the stream from 
bank to bank. Each crooked turn brings to sight a fresh 
forest vista, and where the waters expand into still coves 
there is a momentary glimpse of lily-pads dotted with 
their great fleecy blossoms. Vision revels in these con- 
tinuous but ever-changing pictures of nature, and inspiring 
all is the strange and joyous sense of swift motion without 
effort or toil. In that earliest fleeting hour of a first canoe 
voyage in the wilderness, and before the eye is cloyed 
with nature, are crowded delights which more than repay 
all the privation or peril of the venture. 

The Au Sable is still the most famed for its grayling 
of all Michigan waters, and investigation of the habits 
and qualities of the rare fish was the prime object of our 
arduous trip. The grayling is chiefly found in the upper 
parts of the stream before the waters reach the log 
cuttings which sully its pure flood. Those head-waters 
are like crystal, and even in midsummer cold as ice. The 
current flows at the rate of six miles an hour. There are 



CATCHING THE GRAYLING. 26 1 

no rocks o'r waterfalls along its course, but a constant suc- 
cession of ripples flashing in the sunlight on the surface of 
waters varying from one to ten feet deep down to the 
sands below. These sands, in level beds clean as a tidy- 
housewife's floor, stretch often for hundreds of feet. 
Though the bottoms near to the shore are sometimes 
lined with ragged sunken trees, these seldom reach to 
the central river-bed, where the swift current has swept 
away all obstructions. The quality of the water, tested 
by the taste, is marvellous. Bursting forth at its sources 
from large springs, and preserving its coldness and purity 
for a hundred miles, it can be dipped up and drunk 
with as keen a relish as a draught from a cool country 
well ; for in some subtle way it seems to have lost that 
mild vegetable flavor which occasionally takes off the pure 
edge from the waters of a mountain spring. The grayling, 
most fastidious of fish, finds in waters like those of 
the Au Sable a fitting and congenial home. The main 
river is about fifty feet wide, and very few brooks enter 
it ; nor apparently does the fish ever enter those little 
tributaries, to the very head-waters of which the nimble 
trout would be sure to ascend. 

Every half mile or so brings to the sight of the floating 
voyager on the Au Sable an open space in the forest 
many acres in extent. There are thick, blackened tree- 
trunks on the ground, protruding in all directions from 
their shroud of green underbrush. A more unsightly 
spectacle are the dead pine trees still standing in these 



262 B Y WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

open areas, black around the roots, but reaching, straight 
as arrows, for a hundred feet in air. These are the gaunt 
skeletons of what were once splendid living pines, now 
killed by the forest-fires which periodically sweep through 
the Michigan woodlands during drought. Not far below 
the mouth of the Au Sable, and on the other side of Sag- 
inaw Bay, is the region where the deadly fires two years 
ago devastated the woodlands so terribly, causing the 
loss of hundreds of lives and millions of dollars' worth of 
property. A well-informed resident of Michigan, who 
lives but a few miles from the scene of that horror, 
has described it, not as a burning forest in the ordinary 
sense, but a cyclone of flame, marked in characters of fire 
by many of the phenomena of wind tornadoes. In some 
way the forces generated a powerful volume of air, filled 
with gases in combustion, and penetrated with almost 
supernatural heat. It was a sort of earthly counterpart 
of those tornadoes of fiery gas which astronomers tell 
us sweep over the incandescent envelope of the sun. 
Wherever it touched the ground this flaming destroyer 
consumed. Woods, fences, houses, cattle, and human 
beings were not merely burned, but almost vaporized. 
Often the whirlwind left behind a marked track of ruin, 
with clearly delineated sides. One man would be taken, 
another a few feet away, left. Half of a line of fence 
would be destroyed utterly, while the remaining half 
would not be even scorched. The whirlwind of heat, 
like a cyclone of wind, sometimes bounded from the 



CATCHING THE GRAYLING. 263 

earth only to descend again and lick up the houses and 
forests. It leaped open fields and rivers in an instant, 
converting the surface waters into steam, and finally- 
stopped its career of destruction, not because of lack of 
fuel, but because its strange fiery energy was in some 
occult way exhausted. As proving its peculiar cyclonic 
quality, there is a well-authenticated story of a farmer 
who had left his pantaloons in the middle of a ten-acre 
lot. In the pockets were five trade dollars, and when he 
returned after the swift passage of the flaming whirlwind, 
expecting to find intact the garment so far removed from 
the blazing woods, he found only a lump of melted silver 
where he had left the coins. Looking upon the enormous 
masses of pine trees and vegetation which line the Au 
Sable, conceiving their inflammable condition during 
drought, and then glancing anew at the open burned 
spaces, with their huge charred tree-trunks, one could 
easily imagine that the stories about those swift floods of 
fire were neither fanciful nor exaggerated. 

By local advice we delayed fishing until some five miles 
down the Au Sable, and the same distance from a saw- 
mill whose slabs and dust pollute the stream. Our 
angling outfit consisted of two light rods, an assortment 
of flies, ranging from drab to the most brilliant scarlets 
and yellows, and the box of ground worms which the wise 
angler never omits when new waters are to be tested. 
Our voyage began early in the afternoon. Soon the 
waters became clearer, breaking into larger ripples, and 



264 £ Y- WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

when the sun was some two hours from the horizon we 
essayed our maiden casts, using a worm for the leading 
gut, and two feet back a dun-colored fly, known locally as 
the " grayling." The necessary mode of fishing on the 
Au Sable is peculiar. At few places can the stream be 
fished from the shore without wading, and wading in the 
deep, icy waters is an acute experience to sportsmen who 
meditate camping in the open air. So the common 
method is to catch one of the overhanging trees, to which 
the stern of the skiff may be fastened, or more often the 
man behind holds on while the angler at the bow drops 
line in the long ripples down stream. This latter plan my 
comrade and myself adopted in these experimental at- 
tempts. At almost my first throw there was a gentle pull 
on the line, and I brought up a chub-shiner, a vulgar spe- 
cies of fish which in these waters bite in the swiftest cur- 
rents. Then came more chubs. Ripple after ripple I 
tried with no more substantial rise. At last came a sharp 
silvery gleam, and a splendid fish leaped in air, just miss- 
ing the dun fly. Twice again he showed his shining side, 
then, made wary by failure, sulked at the bottom. A few 
moments later, while the fly lay carelessly close by the 
boat's side, there was a sudden twitch, a brief run and 
struggle, and a grayling, weighing perhaps a quarter of a 
pound, lay in the boat's bottom. It was not much to 
show for a half hour's fishing, but 't was a beginning. 

In the late afternoon we drew our boat to shore at a 
point where a smooth, high bank gave a dry bed among 



CATCHING THE GRAYLING. 265 

some lofty Norway pines. The poetry of camping out in 
Michigan woods needs the realities of a warm couch to be 
effective ; and for a warm couch one must have either 
abundant blankets or a tent, while unluckily we had neither. 
The scant outfit of each of us was composed of two blank- 
ets — one of wool for warmth, the other of rubber as a pro- 
tection against wet. The horrors of that first night will 
be indelible in memory. It opened in the usual haze of 
romance and novelty that tinge an evening in camp. 
There was the balmy pine-scented air, the gleaming fire, 
the full moon shining through tall firs, the ripple of the 
waters, and the more substantial accessory of supper. 
Then as we lay down on our rubber blankets and drew 
about us the woollen coyerlid came the dismal prose. The 
mosquitoes charged down in battalions, their bills whetted 
with acute hunger. The more we folded us in mosquito 
netting the harder we breathed, and when, half-asphyxi- 
ated, we loosened the nets, our cruel foes pounced on us 
in clouds. But the real woes of the victim of this sort of 
camping out come later in the night. Spite of the fret- 
ful drone of his insect foes and the frequent bite, he at 
last falls asleep. For a few hours he slumbers soundly. 
Then dream after dream, each with some frosty, freezing 
conceit, begin to enter his slumberous consciousness. He 
is impaled on some Arctic berg or drops headlong into a 
Niagara of ice-water. One after another these cold phan- 
toms chase through his sleeping fancy. At last, just as 
he imagines some wild Esquimaux stabbing him with an 



266 BY-PFAVS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

icicle, he wakes with the sensation that his vertebral col- 
umn is strung on cold wire. The moon has sunk toward 
the West, and a dank fog rests on the river. The air 
seems wintry, and a keen chill gives the cold a cutting 
edge. The cold humor runs through every fibre to his 
inmost marrow. He heaps up the fire into a big blaze. 
He roasts in front while he freezes behind, and the mo- 
ment he turns he is frozen where before he roasted. 
He prances up and down the river bank for an hour 
or two and thrashes his arms like a maniac, all in vain. 
Wearied out at last, he rolls himself in his blanket, so 
close to the flame that the wool is scorched, and thus, 
with restless slumber filled with shifting dreams of 
martyrdom at the stake or on icebergs, he works through 
to daylight. He feels at least the morbid satisfaction 
that the mosquitoes share his woe, for the sharp cold 
long before has driven every one of the pests to its 
lair. 

After that chilly night-watch we fell to fishing in the 
early morning, more as a counter-irritant to the all-per- 
vading cold than from ardor for the sport. Just oppo- 
site us was a deep pool where the waters eddied back 
around the branches of a sunken tree. Still confiding in 
the killing potency of worm-bait, I dropped the line 
with short snell and lead sinker just within the log, where 
the deep current was momentarily stilled. Instantly 
came an undoubted tug. I struck hard. There was a 
loud splash, followed by the obstinate struggles of a large 



CATCHING THE GRAYLING. 267 

fish beating the water in swirls. With a strong pull— for 
no delay was possible by the side of a knotted, sunken 
pine— I landed a yellow perch, weighing a pound or more. 
Again, with fresh worm, I dropped the hook between two 
branches of the subaqueous tree, where there was no al- 
ternative but an unsportsmanlike " fling " whether fish 
large or small took hold. Again came a sharp stiffening 
of the gut, and high in air flew a silvery half-pound gray- 
ling. The hook tore out, and the fish, dropping on the 
steep slope, bounded back to the river in a trice. There 
were no more bites at that camp-ground, and it began to 
look as though the sole product of two thousand miles 
of travel would be the solitary grayling of the day before, 
whose cost might be estimated in dollars for each grain 
of fish weight. But better luck was happily in store. 

Our traps once more tied in the skiff, we fairly flew 
down the rapid current. Suddenly the river opened to a 
width of seventy-five or a hundred feet. Striking a bank 
the waters whirled backward in a huge eddy, which 
had cut a round pool fifteen or twenty feet deep in the 
sands. By a tall pine on the bank we recognized the spot 
as the " Big Norway," a pool noted for large grayling. No 
time was wasted. My comrade with fly-rigged tackle 
took the open shore, while, mooring the skiff, I cast 
my leaded snell and writhing worm far in the distant 
eddy. The backward current took it to the exact centre 
of the deeper pool, just over the sunken branches of 
another of those water-logged pines which fringe the 



268 B Y- WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

sand bottoms of the Au Sable. Suddenly came a quick 
jerk and that strong throb in the quivering line, which 
always makes the heart of the angler leap. With a firm 
stroke I had the fellow hooked, but he rushed straight for 
the tangled snag. I gave him the butt, and for an 
instant the curved rod swerved him from his course. No 
scope here for a sportsman's scruples over catching 
the first big grayling ! So grasping the line I drew in the 
resisting prey hand over hand for forty feet. The struggle 
quickly ended, and when nearing the boat he came in as 
gently as a sulky perch. A splendid grayling he was, 
weighing a pound and a quarter, with dimpled back 
and two long black marks along his shining breast. A 
second, third, and fourth fish followed in a few moments 
— one a handsome fellow of three quarters of a pound, 
hooked at a distance from the dangerous snag, and played 
to his death in the orthodox fashion. Meanwhile my 
comrade, standing far out on a floating log, had hooked 
on his fly a half-pounder in the ripples. Here in the more 
powerful current the grayling was at his best. Time after 
time he bounded above the surface or struggled below in 
those semicircular leaps for which the trout in swift 
waters is famed. In vain my friend tried to drown the 
fellow by holding his open mouth stiffly against the 
ripples. At the end of ten minutes the sturdy fish 
showed no sign of exhaustion, and had to be landed 
at last in my mate's hat, still struggling fiercely. Our fish 
when laid side by side made a beautiful display — five 



CATCHING THE GRAYLING. 269 

handsome • grayling, weighing each from a quarter of a 
pound up to a pound and a quarter, with sparkling tints 
and lustrous scales. 

This handsome lay-out of grayling, with the variations 
of color, due to difference of age and size, gave us the 
long-wished-for opportunity to record the outward marks 
of the strange fish. The small grayling, of from a quarter to 
half a pound, is almost an exact counterpart on a small 
scale of the salmon. It has, however, fine black spots 
dotting the silvery scales near the gills, and gradually dis- 
appearing toward the middle of the body. Its breast is 
mostly milk-white, but with two faint dusky tracings 
extending below the pectoral fins. In the older grayling, 
however, there are decided changes : the silver-gray tint 
of the side shifts to a faint brown ; the dark specks appear 
only near the gills, and are few in number; the dusky 
pectoral marks deepen into blackness ; and the graceful 
salmon curve to the back of the smaller fish changes in the 
larger to a straight slant. The head of the grayling 
is trout-shaped, but so small that on a pound fish it barely ' 
equals that of a six-ounce trout, while the mouth opens 
with an aperture so narrow as almost to deform the fish. 
Parallel lines of faint yellow reach down the sides. The 
eye is luminous and large, reflecting a lovely shade of 
blue black. The forked tail is of but moderate size, and 
of rich purple hue. The dorsal fin, particularly on 
the larger grayling, has an abnormal development. If the 
mast of an ordinary sail-boat were to be laid on the ground 



270 BV-WAVS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

and the canvas raised in air, the rhomboidal shape of 
this odd dorsal wing would be pretty clearly outlined. 
On our largest fish, weighing, as stated, about a pound 
and a quarter, measurements of this upper fin showed 
a length of about two inches and a half and a height from 
the back of two inches and a quarter. The fin is very 
flexible, and when the fish is poised in the current, sways 
like a sail ; and a row of light-brown spots a little above 
the dorsal ridge make the wing-like protuberance a very 
conspicuous object. Half way between the dorsal 
fin and the tail appears the leathery embryo fin seen 
upon the trout ; and like the trout the grayling has a 
superficial iridescence, very vivid, on its dark back. The 
grayling's flesh is almost white, with just a suggestion of 
salmon tint. When raw it is very solid, making the fish 
very easy to preserve ; and when cooked, in flavor it almost 
exactly resembles that of the trout. The whole body of 
the grayling is covered with scales as large as those of the 
yellow perch of the same size. As the smaller specimens 
may be likened to the salmon, so the larger resemble the 
familiar white-fish of the great lakes. Take away the 
hump of the white-fish's back and the general likeness to 
a grayling would be well-nigh complete. Indeed, many 
of the natives of upper Michigan insist that the grayling 
is a veritable cross between the white-fish and some 
member of the family of the Salmonidce. Another local 
assertion, that the grayling cannot ascend waterfalls on 
account of the resistance of its big dorsal fin, is equally 
apocryphal. 



CATCHING THE GRAYLING. 2/1 

If local report is trustworthy, the Michigan grayling 
spawns in the late autumn or early winter, and reaches 
the best condition in September. He affects smooth or 
pebbly bottoms, and is to the last degree fastidious as to 
the purity of the water where he lives and the general 
cleanliness of his home. The least disturbance of bottoms 
by logs or the slightest pollution of the stream drives him 
far away. The neatness of his habits is attested by the 
total absence of fishy smell when first caught, and in its 
place is a mild and pleasant odor of violets. Nevertheless 
he is slippery and as elusive to the grasp as the trout. 
Flies are the grayling's stock food. Lying close in his 
sandy lair, he watches the watery surfaces, and rises from 
down stream to snap up the insects that float with the 
current. It follows that the most skilful device for cap- 
turing the fish is simply to let your gang of artificial flies 
float downward with slightly relaxed line, so that the fish 
may hook himself. Outside of insects, however, the gray- 
ling has a wide range of appetite. The stomach of one 
specimen dissected showed me only gray and black flies ; 
but another contained a small eel, three inches long, and 
the same fish had been caught on a worm, which proved 
the best bait for grayling of large size. Grasshoppers are 
also, in their season, a killing bait, and a few baby hoppers 
which we caught on shore proved singularly effective on 
the second day of our trip. Out of fifteen grayling caught 
during about four hours' fishing, five — including the two 
largest — were taken on angle-worms, six on artificial flies, 
and four on grasshoppers. 



272 B y- WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

There remains to be noticed another extraordinary 
quality of the grayling that seems strangely inconsistent 
with his liking for clean waters — namely, his tenacity of 
life. During the third day of our fishing experience in 
the Michigan wilds we caught several grayling, of which 
two, weighing about a quarter of a pound each, were 
placed in a pail with not more than a quart of river water. 
At the end of two hours both were alive, though one, 
which had previously been left for some minutes on the 
boat's bottom, gave signs of dying. How much longer 
his brisk comrade would have survived is doubtful, for the 
claims of hunger just then vanquished the ardor of the 
naturalist. The experiment, brief as it was, suggests the 
ease with which some of our clear Eastern streams might 
be stocked with the fish. Whether the grayling, however, 
would associate with the trout of our Eastern waters is 
doubtful ; for it is a singular fact that, though the general 
habits of the two species are very similar, they are never 
found together in the same Michigan rivers. Trout, for 
example, are never caught in the Au Sable, although the 
streams a few miles farther north teem with them. On a 
comparison of the two kin fishes the trout must be reck- 
oned the superior, both as to flavor and fight, though in 
very swift water the grayling, when hooked, seems abso- 
lutely tireless, perhaps owing to the smallness of his 
mouth. But without strong water behind him, the gray- 
ling yields to the suasion of rod and reel as easily as the 
plebeian perch. 



CATCHING THE GRAYLING. 2/3 

During a three-days' water trip for a distance of one 
hundred and fifty miles, the visible traces of man were 
scant and at far intervals. Three or four farm-houses, a 
tented party from Detroit with whom we passed a hos- 
pitable hour, and a small lumber camp were the only 
human signs. Indeed, one of the counties, Oscoda, 
through which the Au Sable runs, in its whole tract of six 
hundred square miles, contains, by the last census, less 
than five hundred inhabitants. It was in this county, 
after a second night of chilly camping, that we lodged 
in a typical farm-house of the Michigan wilderness. 

To the Eastern eye how rough in its outfit and how 
pathetic in its lack of comforts is the home of one of 
those pioneers ! The one I have in mind stands close to 
the brink of the river, so near the waters that the rise of 
last spring swept up to the door-sills. It is made of logs 
squared and fitted at the ends, with the long interstices 
between the timbers closed by wooden wedges and mud 
work. Two or three rugged out-houses similarly con- 
structed give shelter to the farm cattle. The half-cleared 
tract of a hundred and sixty acres, taken by the settler 
under the Homestead Act, is thickly scarred with black- 
ened stumps, between which rise struggling patches of 
grass or grain. Nearer the dwelling is a scrubby garden 
covered with a weak growth of carrots, and the whole 
cleared tract is circled by the ghost-like array of those 
dead pines which, all over Michigan, record the sweep of 
the forest-fires. The dismal environment of the settler's 



274 B V- IVA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

home has its counterpart in the rough walls, the uncar- 
peted floor, the squalid children chasing each other from 
corner to corner, the flock of frowsy chickens that enter 
and go out at will, and, most pathetic of all, the house- 
wife, worn with toil and child-bearing, who, with an in- 
fant at breast, pulls wearily through her dreary round of 
drudgery, In a closet fitted with dirty berths sleep the 
children. Ascend to the upper story next the roof where 
the grown people and visitors sleep ! The garret, for it is 
nothing else, runs the whole length and breadth of the 
structure. In each corner is a rude bed fitted with sheets 
and coverlids on which seems to have gathered the dirt of 
ages. On one of these in the open room slept my com- 
rade and myself. In another was the mistress of the 
manse, whose husband was away in one of the lumber 
towns ; and in a third narrow couch slumbered two hired 
men. With one exception, the nearest neighbor of this 
backwoods family was some ten miles away ; all supplies 
had to come from the lake town of Ausable, fifty or sixty 
miles distant, over sandy roads; and the only visitors 
were the rude lumbermen or an occasional sportsman 
from Saginaw or Detroit. Yet, amid all these shadows 
of poverty, hardship, and squalor, there were some rifts 
of comfort. Faint glimpses of culture were to be seen 
in the coarse prints on the walls, the sewing-machine, and 
some stray efforts at household decoration. The children, 
though untidy, were red-cheeked, and precocious in 
speech and observation far beyound their years ; and the 



CATCHING THE GRAYLING. 2^$ 

temper of the inmates of the rude dwelling reflected the 
most kindly and generous hospitality. When we found 
that this backwoods home had been wrested, only two 
years before, from an unbroken forest, we realized the 
real dignity and import of those humble frontier begin- 
nings from which the greatness of a nation has sprung. 

It was toward the close of our third day on the Au 
Sable that we struck a school of grayling in a spot that 
proved clearly the fish's cleanly and fastidious traits. We 
had passed the north branch of the river, and from a 
washed bank of clay it had poured into the main stream 
a roily flood. A quick turn in the river brought us to the 
mouth of Big Creek, whose clear waters ran for a quarter 
of a mile down stream before they mixed with the muddy 
current. Just at the clear edge of the line dividing the 
two streams the grayling had gathered thickly. Floating 
along on the dingy central flood and throwing my gang of 
flies on the crystal surface beyond, I got rise after rise. 
Next we tried, successfully, the clear side of the stream, 
holding the boat by the overhanging branches and snap- 
ping the flies out to the murky edge. Just where the two 
streams of purity and pollution finally blended our last 
grayling was drawn in, the rods laid aside, and the little 
skiff headed down stream for the long voyage of more 
than a hundred miles, which ended at Bamfield's, two 
miles and a half above a log-jam thirty miles long that 
barred our exit to Lake Huron. 



A YANKEE COON-HUNT. 

NOT a few people, even among those versed in the 
lore of woodland and stream, will be amazed to 
be told that the coon is one of the commonest forest 
creatures of our Eastern States, and that in New Eng- 
land, when hunted systematically, it may be found as 
often as the gray squirrel. Yet many a sportsman, who 
knows every foot of his native township, may trudge for 
years after fin or feather without seeing a single coon. 
So uncommonly, indeed, is the animal to be met with in 
the daytime, that even a glimpse of one usually excites 
general gossip in a Yankee community, and that is a red- 
letter day in a sportsman's life which brings the ring- 
tailed " varmint " to bag. 

The reason of this is the seclusive habit of the animal 
in daylight. Rarely when the sun is up does he leave his 
hiding-place in some deep cleft of a rocky ledge or the 
forsaken nest of a squirrel or crow, where, coiled in sleep, 
he passes the daylight hours. His tameness when occa- 
sionally visible in daytime seems in fact, to argue a kind 
of blindness which prevents his seeking food in sunlight. 
But with the first darkening his nature and habit change. 
Then every sense quickens to movement and alertness. 
In the dusk he leaves his lair to feed, in summer on some 
276 



A YANKEE COON-HUNT. 277 

adjacent field of young corn, in autumn on the acorns and 
chestnuts that fall in the woods. The farmer now and 
then discovers his cornfield ravaged as if by hungry pigs, 
the tender blades, half eaten, strewing the ground far and 
near. Very likely he flings then his rustic epithets at the 
comparatively innocent woodchuck instead of the litter 
of young coons that have really done the mischief. Or 
the observant hunter passing under a chestnut tree in 
autumn will often see fragments of the nuts with their 
meats half chewed lying on the dry leaves. If versed in 
coon-craft, he knows that these are not the remains left 
by a squirrel after his meal ; for the squirrel cleans off the 
nutshell neatly and eats the meat entire. They are in- 
stead the certain sign of the near home of a coon, a quad- 
ruped whose teeth are so formed as to foil the nicer econ- 
omies of nut-eating. It seems a sardonic freak of Nature, 
who usually does things so fitly, that she exposes by day 
to the hunter the thrifty squirrel, while she protects by 
her mantle of darkness the predatory and wanton coon. 
She even goes further in her injustice, and garnishes the 
coon with a thick layer of fat, which answers him for food 
and drink through his torpid winter, until, lean and 
hungry, the spring-time wakes him out to new venture 
and a square meal. 

But not always has the coon a shroud for iniquity in his 
native darkness, as a recent night proved, when the writer 
and a comrade first witnessed a hunt. " A grand night 
for coons," remarked Hurlburt, the more experienced of 



2/8 BY-IVAYS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

the two hunters, under whose leadership the mysteries of 
this nocturnal chase were to be explored; and a grand 
night it was, with every star twinkling in its place, after a 
week of October rain and cloud. At a little after eight 
o'clock the two-seated wagon that was to take us to the 
coon-grounds was drawn out ; a black dog, whose poten- 
tial share in the hunt will be hereafter described, frisked 
about with joyful whines ; a gun, two lighted lanterns, a 
rope, and a pair of the sharp spurs by which telegraph 
repairers climb the poles were added. Then, leaving the 
lights of the hill-top village behind, we descended the 
steep slope eastward, mounted another incline of equal 
pitch and greater altitude, turned into a by-road, stabled 
our horse in a convenient shed, and began our march for 
the woods a quarter of a mile away. A sinister procession 
this, that took its way across the fields, with its rope, its 
blinking lanterns, and its gun, more like a gang of 
burglars than a party of harmless sportsmen. There 
were pasture lots to be crossed, fences to be tumbled over, 
and /Several swamp-holes to be floundered through before 
we reached the edge of the forest, where, a few days 
before, one of our hunters had seen the chestnut crumbs 
left by some witless coon after his night's meal. These 
woods were, in a straight line, less than a mile from the 
village, whose lights almost cast shadows along the sylvan 
edges ; and to three of the party the place was as familiar 
as our own door-yards, often traversed in boyhood, yet 
never, in those days, with sight of a coon or suspicion of 
the animal's presence. 



A YANKEE COON-HUNT. 2'J() 

A wejrd and sombre spectacle it was, as we entered 
those still forest shades. Below was the brown carpet of 
rustling autumn leaves. Above were the spectral tree- 
tops stretching across the stars, except where here and 
there broken by a forest-glade. The lanterns cast 
shadows through the underbrush and shone fitfully on 
the moving forms trampling in Indian file over gully, and 
rock, and cracking bough. When at intervals we stopped 
to listen there were significant little sounds that broke the 
woodland silences. A twig or nut dropped from a tree, or 
a sudden rasp of the leaves, signalled the retreat to its hole 
of some squirrel alarmed by the untimely intrusion. 
The dog's quick tread as he pattered through the brush 
could be heard at times, now duller with distance or 
louder as the animal came back to take up some 
new scent. Once the creature, whose actions were well- 
nigh human in sagacity, broke into a whine, followed by a 
series of deep but spasmodic barks. " Jeff don't bark as 
if he meant business this time," said Hurlburt, " but we '11 
go and see." We found Jeff wheeling in uncertain gyra- 
tions around a group of trees. But as we drew near his 
motions became more definite, his yelps died away, and he 
was off on the fresh scent left by some vagrant coon 
which perhaps only a few moments before had fled from 
the tree clump. Now our party separated. The two raw 
members of it remained behind while the hunters passed 
on along the dog's track. We waited for ten minutes, 
when suddenly came again Jeff's deep bass, not as before 



280 By-tVAVS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

in quavers, but strong, steady, and regular — the certain 
proof that the game was driven to tree. Erelong, too, the 
joyful call of the hunters confirmed our hope, and, after a 
wild dash through briers, over ledges, and across a wood- 
land swamp, we stood under the tree up which JefT had 
driven his quarry. It was a big maple, thick with boughs 
and dwarfing the smaller woods that edged the swamp. 
Looking upward we could descry dimly what seemed 
a knot on one of the upper boughs, but so vague and im- 
movable that it was hard to fancy it a living creature. 
One of the hunters took the gun, and standing behind, at 
his order, I let a dim gleam from the lantern fall athwart 
the shining barrels. Four times he fired, but only the 
falling twigs cut by the shot and the sharp echo through 
the woods came back. It was almost like a shot in space, 
so deep was the obscurity above, made blacker by the 
thick maple boughs. 

Now opened the second act of the coon-tragedy. Hurl- 
burt, Jeff's master and the leading coon-hunter of the 
town, buckled on his spurs. Placing his hands lightly on 
the tree trunk, he mounted it as readily as a flight of 
stairs, and in two minutes was far aloft in the boughs. 
" Gosh," came down a voice tremulous with excitement, 
" if there ain't three coons in this tree ! " Then presently : 
" By thunder, there 's another one too ! " Immediately 
the climber came down to the lowest branches, caught the 
rope thrown to him by one of the party, mounted once 
more, and drew up the gun tied to the lower end of the 



A YANKEE COON-HUNT. 28 1 

cord. "Look out, I 'm goin' to let him have it," he 
yelled, followed by the discharge of the piece. " He 's 
goin* to tumble," came again from the tree-top, but no 
coon dropped. Another discharge echoed through the 
woods, and a dark object dropped crashing through the 
branches. In the blaze of our lights it took the form of a 
coon, which, striking on its rump with upright body, 
bounded two feet in the air like a rubber ball, and on fall- 
ing back dashed for the underbrush. Now came the ex- 
citing episode of a coon-hunt. In a second Jeff had 
caught the animal by the back, and was whirling like the 
fly-wheel of an engine, keeping always, so far as might be, 
the coon's nose at the circumference of the circle. The 
instant the coon, resisting the centrifugal force, reached 
backward for a bite, Jeff dropped it, and two heavy blows 
fell on the creature from my comrades' clubs. Then the 
dog entered the mel^e again, and the scene was re-enacted, 
until the coon, yielding to the awful odds, dropped on 
its side quivering and lifeless. It would be hard to do 
justice in written words to that scene — the snapping, bit- 
ing creature, the shouting men, the tumbles over rocks and 
crackling boughs, the snarling dog whirling in a rotatory 
fog; dog, men, and coon in a twisted, yelling, yelping 
medley, set in a rude and rocky piece of ground among 
thick underbrush, and the whole palely lighted by the 
lantern's beams. 

The last shot had exhausted the stock of cartridges, 
and three coons still hung on the topmost branches of 



282 £Y.U^AYS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

the maple. The gun, therefore, which in a coon-hunt 
is only used to expedite the fall of the animal, was tied 
to a bough, and Hurlburt began anew his ascent. The 
doomed creatures above, made desperate by their strait, 
strove vainly to escape. Out they ran to the farthest 
twigs of the branches, which bent like willow shoots 
under the weight ; but one by one the coons were 
shaken down, and the bloody episode already depicted 
was re-enacted on the ground below. At the end of 
this butchery there lay side by side four coons, weighing 
each some fifteen pounds. The game had been bagged 
within three quarters of an hour, and not more than 
a mile and a quarter away from a populous Yankee 
village. 

In an hour more another victim was added. This 
time Jeff's voice sounded from a point a hundred rods 
away. The dog was at the foot of a chestnut-tree in the 
thicker woods, its shaft reaching upward forty feet with- 
out a twig, while forty feet farther in air was a dark mass 
on a small limb. This coon made vain attempts to leap 
to a tree near by, but the small shoot to which the creat- 
ure hung gave it no fulcrum. At last it dropped eighty 
feet without a limb to break its fall, bounding up unhurt 
ready for its fight, which ended like the others. The 
traps were gathered, the coons distributed and lugged 
to the wagon, and within three hours after leaving the 
village we were home again and in our beds. 

Coons average about eighteen pounds each in weight. 



A YANKEE COON-HUNT. 283 

A young specimen will sometimes go down to ten 
pounds, while a patriarchal coon will reach twenty-eight 
or thirty pounds. The coon has a tail ringed in alternate 
circles of black and light gray, the tints deepening with 
age. Its fur is gray in color, coarse and thick, and the 
creature's head is fox-like in contour, sharpening to a 
nose so sharp and puny as to be almost a deformity. Its 
mouth, set back below its nasal extremity, is armed with 
sharp, white teeth, with which, as well as with its keen 
claws, it fights savagely. Its meat is reputed very de- 
licious, in color and savor much resembling a rich spare- 
rib; and its pelt, used for lap-robes, fetches in the fur 
market from fifty cents to a dollar. Some of the creat- 
ure's habits are uniquq. If possible, when shaken from 
a tree, it takes to the water, often diving to escape the 
dog ; and the somewhat rare combination during a hunt 
of a man-dog-and-coon fight in a pool is said to be a 
spectacle beyond description. Perhaps the most amazing 
of all the coon's physical powers is that which enables 
it to light in an upright position on its buttocks after 
a fall that of itself would seem fatal to so heavy a creat- 
ure. But coons are as much at home in a tree as 
squirrels, and one of those we butchered that night, after 
falling thirty feet, caught a small branch and once again 
had to be dislodged. Coons are abundant in New Eng- 
land simply because good coon dogs are scarce. " JefT," 
the real hero of the night's bloody epic, is said to be the 
only well-trained one in the county, and may be described 



284 BY-PVAYS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

briefly as an ideal type. He is a cross between a fox- 
hound and a shepherd-dog — solid, square-limbed, with 
smooth black fur, a bright clear eye, and a thick neck, 
on which he bears a small bunch as a memento of an 
early struggle with a coon. His master first trained him 
by "setting" him on coons in a cornfield, and his later 
education is the result of slow development. "Jeff" 
rarely barks when on the scent of a coon. He runs 
lightly as a partridge, and suddenly bursting on the feed- 
ing animal drives it to the nearest tree. Other dogs, by 
barking when on the scent, give the coon a long lead 
that lets it escape either to a rocky chasm or to the 
hollow tree that is its home. Jeff's master says that he 
has known the dog to force two coons into an alder bush 
and keep them there until shaken down. Last year, with 
Jeff's potent aid, he killed thirty-seven coons, and this 
season has already brought in twenty ; while the stories 
he tells of astonishing Yankee farmers, by taking coons 
almost at their doors, form most amusing features of his 
experience as a hunter. 

But when the best is said for it, coon-hunting is a 
sickening and brutal sport. The angler and ordinary 
hunter at least give their victim a chance for life; but 
the wretched coon, once treed, is signed, sealed, and 
delivered to his foes. That night's experience, exciting 
though it was as a novelty, was not one that a sportsman 
with pity in his nature would care to repeat, and its 
spirit can be renewed at any time by a brief visit to the 
shambles. 



LOGGING IN MICHIGAN WILDS. 

FOR some twenty-five miles above Bamfield's on the 
Au Sable, the erratic stream, everywhere swift, 
accelerates its strong current. So rapidly does it sweep 
that, using oars and paddle, my comrade and myself sped 
over the whole twenty-five miles in two and a half hours. 
Just at the head of the reach of rapids stands the Scott 
and Lewis lumber-camp, where, at the coming of a 
thunder-storm in the thickening twilight, we took refuge. 
The kindly lumbermen received us with rough but 
friendly hospitality; we slept for the night in one of 
their berths, shared their morning and evening meals, and 
saw in epitome the routine of their life in the woods. 
Incidentally also, we heard from their lips the story of 
their winter toil, expressed so vividly in their free and 
picturesque phrases that one could scarcely have got a 
clearer idea of it by actual living in their snowy winter 
camps. Much that pertains to lumbering has changed 
since the old time : new processes for handling the logs, 
improved saws, better discipline, and a dozen labor-saving 
devices have superseded former methods, until now a 
modern factory is not further ahead of its predecessors of 
half a century ago than is the new system of logging in 
advance of the crude, old-fashioned work with axe and 

chain. 

285 



286 £y.ivAys of nature and life. 

Lumbering in Michigan, now the great American centre 
of the industry, is a complex business needing brains 
and abundant capital. Usually the owners of some great 
saw-mill on the Saginaw or some other Michigan river 
have title to forests of pine covering many square miles. 
They unite with their mill the business of getting out the 
lumber from the woods, establishing the camps, supplying 
them with provisions, and attending to the thousand ex- 
pensive details of two lines of industry radically distinct. 
The camps in the woods contain from thirty to two hun- 
dred men each, and the one on the Au Sable to which I 
have referred may be cited as a type of all. It is a little 
clump of rude buildings, hewn directly from the primitive 
forest, each structure of the log-hut order. The long 
trees when cut down are sawed to the needed lengths. 
Then the ends are squared by the axe and fitted to each 
other tier above tier. The larger interstices are filled 
with wooden wedges, the smaller with clay. The roofs 
are covered with light logs thatched above with hemlock- 
bark, and a few sawed timbers supply the flooring and 
internal fittings. At one end of the camp is placed the 
largest structure, used for a stable, in which the powerful 
teams of hardy horses inured to winter hauling are 
bedded and fed. In an adjacent log-building, fitted with 
tiers of berths and with a huge stove as a centre-piece, 
sleep the workmen. A little farther away is a third 
building, where on benches along a primitive table the 
log-men eat their meals, which are cooked in the same 



LOGGING IN MICHIGAN WILDS. 287 

Structure. The quickness with which a gang of skilled 
backwoodsmen will construct one of these camps and 
equip it for the winter is well-nigh incredible. Often two 
or three days sufBce, and in the Scott and Lewis camp 
we were shown a tight, comfortable stable, thirty-five feet 
square, twenty-five feet high to the ridge pole, with an 
upper story for hay, all put up by the hardy log-men in a 
day and a half. As a rule, the camps, when the logs are 
to be driven down stream, are placed near the river bank ; 
but much of the wholesale logging of Michigan in these 
later times is done along lines of temporary railroad, 
which penetrate to regions distant from those river forests 
which were the first to receive the onset of the great 
industry. Except, however, in the method of finally 
transferring the logs to the saw-mills, railroad and river 
lumbering are substantially the same. 

The road through the underbrush winds perhaps for a 
mile to a mile and a half away from the river's bank into 
the thicker woods where the white pine attains its great- 
est altitude and diameter. This is no pigmy forest, like 
those of our Eastern States, into which the Michigan 
lumberman first enters, but a magnificent ocean of pines, 
thirty or forty to the acre, two feet in diameter, usually 
straight as a plumb-line, and with their evergreen crests a 
clear hundred feet above the ground. Working in gangs 
of two or three, the log-men approach one of these forest 
titans. With skilled eyes they scan it, detecting instantly 
the least variation from the perpendicular or any in- 



288 BY-IVAVS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

equality of weight in the branches, the lowest of which is 
seventy feet in air. Next, one of the gang with the 
axe cuts a small gash, maybe three inches deep, on the 
side toward which the tree is to fall. Then two, working 
a cross-cut saw, assail the sylvan monarch on the bark 
opposite the gash. If the tree " binds " the saw, as hap- 
pens but rarely, a wedge driven in the cut gives relief, 
and presently the huge tree topples and falls to a nicety 
in the direction desired. The comparatively small 
branches are trimmed away, and the trunk cut by the 
saw to the requisite lengths. If long timber is needed, it 
is severed perhaps twice, but usually the lengths run 
from ten to fifteen feet, and rarely or never are they cut 
above the point where the trunk narrows to ten inches 
diameter. Then comes the hardest labor of all. Reach- 
ing into the forest is a long double row of " skids," a sort 
of log railroad with one end terminated by the roadway, 
the other ending in two tree-trunks tapering to their 
smaller extremities so that the logs may be rolled upon 
them more easily. Seizing the great log with his " pevy *' 
— a stout handle ending in a pike and fitted at the side 
with a sharp bent hook that looks like the half of an ice 
dealer's tongs — the lumberman hoists the log on the skid 
and rapidly rolls it over and over to the main roadway. 
There the stout horses, with ropes and big nippers, fasten 
on to the end, and the log is drawn to the river bank, 
where, branded half-a-dozen times at the end with the 
marks of the owners, it is either dragged on the ice or left 



LOGGING IN MICHIGAN WILDS. 2«9 

on the bank to be rolled in the water later for its spring 
voyage. This prompt and easy transportation of the log 
to the river bank is of the first importance in profitable 
lumbering. Usually, after a deep snow-fall, it is facili- 
tated by an ingenious expedient : A tank, some fifteen 
feet long, four feet deep, and five feet wide, is built and 
mounted on runners. Just as the sun goes down and the 
cold night approaches, the tank is filled with river water, 
a set of plugs withdrawn, and the cistern is pulled slowly 
over the mile-long roadway. Next morning, where before 
was obstructive snow, is a broad pathway of solid ice, 
over which the logs can be drawn at a trot as easily as 
upon the frozen surface of a lake. 

The breezy orators of the West, who have soared so 
often to peaks of hyperbole with the "ringing axe of 
the woodman " for a figure of speech, must hereafter 
either falsify the facts or mourn a lost metaphor. As 
the king-implement of lumber-craft the axe has been 
long supplanted by the costly but infinitely more effi- 
cient saw. It may be asserted, indeed, that the perfec- 
tion as a cutter which the saw has reached has fairly 
revolutionized the whole industry of lumbering. The 
saws in Michigan, where lumber leads the van of products, 
vary widely in shapes and sizes. There is the gang saw 
of the mill, with its thirty upright blades, cutting four 
big logs at once into boards in less than three minutes, 
and requiring immense steam-power; the chisel buzz 
saw, six feet in diameter, costing some $300, that slabs 



290 B V- IVA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

a log fifteen feet long in two or three seconds with 
its movable teeth ; saws for cutting slantwise ; change- 
able saws, working on curves, for shaping barrel staves ; 
saws that slant the edges of barrel heads; saws with 
reverse action for the thick and thin edges of shingles; 
and a host of other saws with too many names and 
motions to be described in detail here. But the saw 
most used in the woods at first glance seems of the 
most ordinary cross-cut order, like that used for a thick 
log in an Eastern wood-yard. Examine it, however, more 
closely, and you will find that the teeth, instead of being 
bent in the old style, are widened at the apex so as to 
avoid clogging; it is, moreover, only every other tooth 
that cuts, for between each pair is a bifurcation at the 
end of a square shoulder that, as the saw moves, cleans 
away the dust, allowing each tooth to play freely against 
the uncut wood ; while the saw itself is made of steel so 
beautifully tempered that the workmen bend it without 
injury into a double coil, like a Damascene sword-blade. 
The wonders in cutting accomplished by this improved 
flexible saw in the hands of the skilled Michigan woods- 
men almost pass conception. Working on a test two 
men have felled in ten minutes ten pines, each of them 
two feet in diameter; and where a gang of three men 
used to consider ninety logs a large day's work, two 
hundred logs a day are now regarded as nothing unusual. 
As may be imagined, the good condition of the saw is of 
prime moment, and perhaps the best-paid man in a 



LOGGING IN MICHIGAN WILDS. 29 1 

lumber-mill or camp is he who repairs the broken 
teeth and keeps the saw in good temper ; while a broken 
pike-head left in a log often causes most costly damage, 
particularly after the rough timber reaches the mill. 
They tell a very credible story of a revengeful back- 
woods farmer— or "tenderfoot," as they most unfittingly 
call a farmer of the kind in the Michigan country— who, 
in his ire over some wrong, spiked the logs of his 
capitalist foes and made them immense loss in broken 
saws after the timber had reached the mills. 

The axes used in the Michigan woods seem to be 
lighter than those of the Eastern wood-chopper, but fitted 
with a longer helve. The skill in chopping of the Michi- 
gan woodsman in these days of the triumphant saw is not 
very marked. A queer, double-edged axe much in vogue 
is hung on a helve at the centre. One blade is thin, the 
other thick, used respectively for chopping and splitting. 

The human product of this remote, isolated existence, 
with its strenuous work its rough fare, and its rigid disci- 
pline under the iron rule of the foreman of the camp, is a 
strange sort of being. In physique the lumberman is gen- 
erally a tremendous fellow, with mighty thews, deep 
shoulders, and a body whose every sinew above the waist 
has been thickened by incessant toil. A good many, too, 
particularly those of Scotch birth or extraction, have clas- 
sic profiles and lofty foreheads that belie their untutored 
intellects. But one may search far before he finds a set 
of men, as a whole, whose external traits are more rad- 



292 B Y- WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE, 

ically vicious. Almost every man drinks when he has the 
chance, nearly all are licentious, and for redundant and 
voluble profanity they vie with the mates of the Missis- 
sippi boats. Their swearing is perfectly comic in its range 
and freedom. All emphasis is lost in the torrent of oaths, 
and the profane tongue so interlards ordinary talk as to 
obstruct sense and cause a most lamentable waste of col- 
loquial energy. When, after their four or five months of 
winter labor, these big fellows are paid off and go down 
with full pockets to Bay City or some other lake town, 
they change a peaceful community into a wild pandemo- 
nium. Like sailor Jack after a voyage, their hard-earned 
dollars melt away in the vilest orgies, and a few days finds 
them penniless and with sunken cheeks seeking a job 
among the booms or saw-mills. In these terrible spells, 
coming once or twice a year, the strongest constitutions 
are sapped, and the local proverb, " Smell pine without 
whiskey, in old age you '11 be frisky," is rarely realized. 
Yet underlying all the lumberman's callousness and laxity 
of morals, there are some substantial traits. He is good- 
tempered, spite of his prolific and aimless profanity ; gen- 
erous and hospitable beyond his means ; in camp, at least, 
he is said to be honest ; and he submits to discipline and 
bends to his yoke of toil with cheerful composure. That 
yoke is certainly a rasping and heavy one : all day long 
during the short cycles of winter he must labor from sun- 
rise to nightfall, often in peril from the falling tree or ill- 
l)alanced log ; he must put up with a pabulum of which 



LOGGING IN MICHIGAN WILDS. 293 

boiled potatoes, salt ham, and astringent pork are the 
foremost luxuries; he has to separate himself from all 
civilized life and fall back for his diversions on the rude 
amusements and coarse yarns of the camp ; and all this 
he must endure for thirty dollars a month and board, under 
a foreman whose powers within the pale of the camp are 
absolutely despotic. 

They tell some good local stories to illustrate the char- 
acter of the lumberman. One runs as follows : Some 
years ago in the autumn a steamer was on its voyage up 
Lake Huron with a gang of lumbermen on board bound 
to their winter camp. On board also there happened to be 
a Methodist exhorter. Many of the rough woodsmen who 
had served in the Civil. War beguiled the lazy moments 
with stories of the field and march under Grant, Sher- 
man, or Sheridan. At last the exhorter, seeing what 
seemed a chance for an evangelical stroke, stood up 
ostentatiously and said : " I too have been a soldier." 
" What part of the country," queried a rough lumber- 
man, " did you serve in, sir ? Was yer in Virginia or on 
the Mississippi?" "I," replied the exhorter, "have 
served in no army of bayonets, but in the hosts of the 
Lord." "Waal," answered the log-man, "mister, ain't 
yer a good ways from camp up here ? " 

An incident equally characteristic of the lumberman 
came partly under my own observation at Bamfield's, 
during our brief stay. Bamfield's is a rude farm-house 
where many of the river-men sojourn during their work 



294 B Y- WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

of driving logs. In the dining-room is hung an efful- 
gent poster sent out by some religious society, represent- 
ing the Scriptural incident of the deluge. The ark is 
moored to the strand on a yeasty expanse of sea; in 
the background rises an ancient city, with its vaulting 
towers and battlements , in the foreground Noah, in 
flowing garb, is portrayed leading to the ark the pro- 
cession of paired brutes who, docile as lambs, reach two 
by two in a long train to the distant horizon. The 
whole picture is gotten up in most gorgeous hues, and 
luminous with all the tints of the rainbow. A big 
lumberman entered the room. He gazed for a while 
upon the picture, then remarked innocently : " When 's 
the circus and where 's it a-goin' to be ? " 

Taking the host of logs down the river in a " drive " is 
the most picturesque as well as most perilous experi- 
ence of the lumberman's lot. Tumbled in the 
head-waters from the bank or kept back by booms from 
descending with the ice, the logs fill the stream four 
or five deep for several miles. Finally the booms are 
loosed and the long column moves. The effect of the 
great mass in motion is indescribably grand. The whole 
river takes on the likeness of a writhing snake. Some 
logs forced upward from below stand for a moment on 
end, then fall over with a crash ; others are shot up on 
shore to remain "hung up" till the next flood. Anon 
perhaps the whole mass at some corner of the stream jams 
in a long chaotic procession, reaching as far up stream 



LOGGING IN MICHIGAN WILDS. 295 

as one can see. The half-dozen or more drivers who 
pilot the log flotilla are men whose lives have been 
passed in their dangerous calling, gifted with wonderful 
sureness of foot and quickness of hand. With their 
spiked boots they run about as freely on the moving mass 
as men on common ground. Their pevies and pike 
poles are in use every instant, here to start a stranded 
wood giant, there to snatch out a recusant log that 
threatens a jam, everywhere to keep the surging, ponder- 
ous, sinuous snake moving down and onward. When at 
last comes the inevitable jam, the river driver's skill is 
put to its supremest test. With an unerring skill that 
smacks of instinct, his eye detects the " key " log that 
holds the drive in check. Without fear he essays the 
dangerous feat of snatching away this key, nor, with all 
his quickness, does he always escape the thundering 
mass that rushes down when the key is loosed. These 
river-drivers, who are a class by themselves, get while 
at work two dollars and a half a day and board — a 
slight enough compensation for the terrible peril and the 
worse exposure to icy waters which brings the large 
majority to rheumatic complaints and an early grave. 
At the mouth of the river, after a Journey of several 
weeks, during which the drivers either camp on shore 
or seek shelter in the occasional farm-houses, the log 
procession reaches its destination. The logs are sorted 
out by their marks, " rafted " into long rows held together 
by ropes, and towed to the great mills to be sawed. 



296 BV-IVAYS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

The next stage of the saw log's history must take us to 
one of those great timber emporia of Michigan that He on 
the lower waters of a lumber stream. Of these none sur- 
passes or, indeed, rivals Saginaw, on the river of the same 
name, some twenty miles above its mouth. For sixteen 
miles down to Bay City, near Lake Huron, the stream 
flows between wooden strands. Vision strains itself in 
vain to see beyond the lumber horizon that stretches 
east and west. The yellow waters, perhaps two hundred 
feet wide, pass first between continuous booms, each 
enclosing its army of giant logs. These booms reach far 
above Saginaw, and if we include tributaries of the river 
and count both sides, make up a line of log posts seventy- 
five miles long. Next to the logs and on the bank proper 
rise, most impressive of all, the tracts of sawn lumber. 
Pile on pile they loom up on either side for sixteen miles 
up and down the stream, covering acre after acre until the 
wooden monotony becomes oppressive. Now and then 
the timber strand becomes thinner only to rise again to 
more imposing height and width around a new cluster of 
mills. These mills, often of grand proportions, spring 
from their lumber heaps as a lofty giant of story looms 
amid the disintegrated bones of his victims. Their tall 
iron chimneys belch black smoke, the rattling saws cut the 
air with their distant hum, and the sense of industrial 
activeness is filled out by the hives of workmen swarming 
over the lumber hills and loading them, by slow but steady 
toil, into barges whose hulls rival the capacity of a 



LOGGING IN MICHIGAN WILDS. 297 

Cunardef. Along this stretch of sixteen miles of the 
Saginaw River there are sawed annually into timber a 
billion feet of lumber, and last year the figures went fifty 
millions higher than that amount. Since to most readers 
these figures are a vague immensity of numbers, let us try 
to simplify them by an illustration. A foot of lumber, 
the unit of board measure, means a board one foot square 
and one inch thick ; so that, for example, a plank two 
inches thick, one foot wide, and ten feet long would con- 
tain twenty lumber feet. Now apply the measure to the 
figures of the annual Saginaw lumber product as cited 
above. We shall find that the Saginaw mills turn out 
each year so much lumber, large and small, that if it were 
all cut in inch-thick boards, each of them one foot wide, 
and then these boards were placed end to end, they would 
reach about 200,000 miles, or eight times around our 
planet. The product, to put the illustration a little differ- 
ently, would supply lumber enough for a fence four times 
around the world, made of solid wooden posts and with a 
double row of boards each six inches wide. More roughly 
it may be calculated that the yearly Saginaw lumber prod- 
uct in logs floating closely together would cover a water 
area of considerably more than four square miles. 

The coves of the Saginaw — called locally " bayous," a 
term borrowed from the lower Mississippi — are specially 
adapted for the gathering and organization of these 
log armies. The military metaphor, indeed, has peculiar 
fitness here, for the logs are mustered side by side in 



298 BV-fVAVS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

companies held together by a rope fastened to each 
log by a device not unlike the domestic clothes-pin. As 
the logs down stream are worked up by the tireless mills, 
these upper booms are drawn upon for more, until 
the freezing river finds them quite empty, and another 
winter comes on to yield its fresh supply. 

But the saw log's story becomes most dramatic as it 
nears the mill and, loosed from the restraining rope, is 
steered into the glade of open water that leads up to the 
wooden slide. If we enter now the great lumber-mill, 
we shall be in at the saw log's death. Down the 
slide on a wooden railroad runs a heavy truck, fitted with 
two cross lines of heavy iron teeth. With a plunge 
it dashes below the water, still holding its place on 
the rails. Then three giant logs are floated above it. At 
a signal the steam is let on, the machinery reversed, the 
strong chain holding the truck tightens, and the truck it- 
self begins to ascend. The sharp teeth catch the logs, 
which, in a trice, are lifted dripping from the water, 
whisked up like twigs a hundred feet to the mill, and 
rolled off opposite the first set of saws. These saws are 
two in number : one set below is of the buzz variety, per- 
haps six feet in diameter, and cutting therefore through a 
three-foot log ; but as this semi-diameter is often insuffi- 
cient for a big log, a second and smaller " buzz," placed 
above and in front of the first, cuts the slice, which other- 
wise might still hold fast the slab. One of the largest 
logs weighs a number of tons, and human strength alone 



LOGGING IN MICHIGAN WILDS. 299 

would never suffice to turn it after one of its sides 
has been " slabbed." Just here comes in a beautiful piece 
of powerful mechanism. At the touch of a lever a stout 
beam, armed with iron teeth, rises by the forest giant's 
side. It snatches the wood, and in less time than words 
can tell it the log is tumbled over, and the framework, 
rushing back and forth with amazing speed, has driven 
the edges of the tree athwart the saws, until the once 
rough stick comes forth a symmetrical square. Then, in 
another instant it is shifted before the " gang," a set of 
ordinary upright saws placed an inch apart, and often 
with thirty or even thirty-five blades. Below, an ordinary 
circular planer revolves in front of the gang and smooths 
the lower edges of the boards. The immense piece 
of timber is run through in a few moments, and what was 
five minutes before a rough tree-trunk has passed into the 
inch boards of commerce. Nor does the work end here ; 
for the slabs are passed to a new machine, which seizes 
them as with a living being's grasp, and whatever part 
of them can be made so become laths. Other machines 
take the harder woods, ash, elm, or oak, and convert them 
with equal speed into staves, barrel heads, or shingles; 
and finally the otherwise useless debris passes to the 
furnaces to feed the fires of the engine. There is 
seen little or no sawdust around the Saginaw lumber- 
mills, for the reason that it is all fed automatically to 
furnace flames; and, in general, the cycle of utilities 
by which one branch of the great industry is made to feed 



300 B Y. WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

or supplement another seems as rounded as human 
ingenuity can make it. 

Sometimes, particularly in the more modern mills, the 
routine as described is varied by lifting the logs from the 
river on an endless chain ; and a number of minor 
mechanisms fill out the devices by which the lumber 
is cut and distributed. One ingenious machine, working 
double emery wheels, sharpens the buzz saws on both 
sides of the teeth during a single revolution of the saw's 
disk, and requires no attention beyond simply the fasten- 
ing of the saw upon it and the unfastening after the work 
is done. Another flattens out, by a clever mechanical 
expedient, the teeth of the saw so as to cut a wider rent 
and prevent clogging as the cut becomes deeper. More- 
over, a system of elevated railroads takes the lumber- 
laden trucks and distributes the boards at the points in 
the yard or on the wharf whence they are to be shipped. 

The present size and swift growth of the lumber indus- 
try of Michigan, as shown by statistics, are almost start- 
ling. Twenty years ago a few hundred million feet of lum- 
ber were cut in the State ; now the annual product is one 
quarter that of our whole country, and reaches more than 
four billion feet. Cut in boards, twelve inches wide and one 
inch thick, the yearly product would reach eight hundred 
thousand miles, and would suffice for a double-boarded 
fence, with posts, sixteen times around the earth. It would 
build houses for a city of a million inhabitants, and would 
each year load some twenty-five hundred miles of railroad 



LOGGING IiV MICHIGAN- WILDS. 3OI 

cars. Those who were far-sighted enough to buy Michi- 
gan lumber-lands a quarter-century ago at a little more 
than the Government price of a dollar and a quarter an 
acre, have already made colossal fortunes out of tracts 
which sell readily now at from fifteen to twenty dollars 
an acre. Nevertheless, the business has its ups and 
downs, and is particularly down when a great forest-fire 
sweeps over a lumber region. In that event, unless the 
trees are cut within a year, a worm penetrates the timber, 
spoiling it in a few months. One of the curious facts in 
this connection is the almost immediate appearance by 
millions of the moth that hatches the worm on a burned 
tract of perhaps ten thousand acres, where before not a 
moth of the species was visible. Equally surprising is the 
circumstance, that after the pine has been cut away on an 
immense tract there spring up all over it poplar trees 
where before not a sign of the poplar could be seen — the 
seeds of the new growth, no doubt, wafted invisibly from 
a distance through the air and finding fertile lodgment on 
the uncovered soil. The value of the lumber, when 
marketed, may be judged from the fact that an ordinary 
pine makes some two thousand feet of cut boards, worth 
at the mills, say forty dollars, while the biggest pines pro- 
duce five thousand feet, worth one hundred dollars. As 
showing the size to which the white pine sometimes at- 
tains, the lumbermen tell of a sound tree in northern 
Michigan, eleven feet in diameter at the ground. The 
owner of this splendid shaft has already refused one hun- 



302 BV-IVAYS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

dred dollars for sixteen linear feet of the butt, which was 
sought for exhibition. But, unhappily, all these evidences 
of Michigan's vast wealth in lumber are only the signals 
of the end. Some ten years more, at the present rate of 
denudation, will exhaust the grand pine forests of the 
State, and unless the cutting of harder woods, cedar, 
maple, and elm, succeeds, large amounts of invested capi- 
tal must seek new fields. Nevertheless Michigan, with 
an area so great that the distance from Detroit to the 
northern end equals the distance from the same city to 
New York ; with a yearly product in crude iron exceed- 
ing that of any State in the Union ; with a salt product 
greater than that of all the rest of the United States, and 
an output of copper only rivalled in the whole world by 
Chili, — with so great natural elements of wealth as these 
the great State, even though it loses its present foremost 
rank as an American lumber mart, may yet count its 
coming centuries of continuous and abundant prosperity. 



THE FATHER OF WATERS. 

THE Eastern resident who for the first time sees 
the Mississippi at Memphis in a dry season is 
certain to be keenly disappointed. From early boy- 
hood up to the days of his maturity, he has always 
thought of the stream as something vast and indefin- 
able, dwarfing all other American rivers as Niagara 
dwarfs waterfalls. The dark, crooked line which his 
callow finger first traced out, bisecting his school-boy 
map, has lost none of its ideal bigness when he hears 
of it in later life as a great artery of trade, and reads 
of the havoc wrought by the great river in its angry 
moods of overflow. But he travels to Memphis ; he 
goes down one of the westward streets of the city 
twice within a few years smitten with pestilence, but 
whose busy thoroughfares bear witness to the abiding 
vitality of trade ; he passes the levee, and descending 
a long incline of cobble-paved strand, the Father of 
Waters is at his feet. The transition from the river 
of imagination to the river of fact is abrupt and harsh. 
The stream before him is not broader than the Hudson 
off the northern end of Manhattan Island, and at places 
below Memphis it narrows until seemingly not more than 
a third of a mile in width. Its muddy, opaque waters 
303 



304 B y. fVA vs OF na ture and life. 

detract alike from its romance and its suggestion of 
depth, while a long barren island of sand in the centre 
of the stream makes the river seem both narrower and 
shallower than it really is. Beyond rises the dreary level 
of the Arkansas shore lined with timber, varied here and 
there by a clearing and a weather-beaten log-hut. The 
only thing to break the disappointment at this first view 
of the river during drought is the roar of trade on the 
Memphis strand, the piles of goods, the teeming wharf 
boats and the steam-boats puffing their impatience of the 
restraining ropes. 

This is the stream in a dry season. How different 
its aspect when the vernal rains have filled the banks 
to overflowing! In no respect is the river so grand 
and strange as in the enormous range between its high 
and low waters. Travelling down its current by boat 
one sees a dark line distinctly marked on the tree-trunks. 
This line, six feet from the roots, while the foot of the 
tree stands on the top of a steep bank twenty or twenty- 
five feet above low-water, registers the high-water mark 
which the river reaches each spring. During the win- 
ter the Mississippi is comparatively low, and above 
St. Louis it is closed by ice. Then come the warm 
spring rains. The muddy waters rise, burst their icy 
fetters, and sweep the huge ice-cakes down to melt in 
the warm suns of the lower waters. Still the stream 
keeps on growing. The snow-fed tributaries of its upper 
waters, and the swelling floods of the Ohio and Missouri, 



THE FATHER OF WATERS. 305 

forbid a pause. The water creeps up inch by inch, one 
foot, ten feet, thirty feet. It is over its banks, pouring 
six feet through the woods of Arkansas, filling up the 
bayous and basins far back of its natural bounds. Where 
before was a river with well-defined banks is now a vast 
turbid lake from three to eighty miles broad, covered 
with drift-wood, and, where it breaks a levee, carrying 
devastation over whole counties of rich cotton and sugar 
land. 

Wherever the current slackens, the river, whether high 
or low, drops the all-pervasive mud and builds up a 
bank ; on the other hand, wherever the strong current 
strikes a bank there it begins to cut, undermine, and 
carry away the soil. All along the river's course these 
two processes can be watched — on the one side always 
the shallow, sloping bank indicating a filling up ; on the 
other the steep, crumbling slope which the water is 
cutting away. The stories, well substantiated, of the 
power of the river current when turned fairly against 
one of its banks strain our credulity. A hundred 
acres of heavily wooded land will often be swept away 
in a few years. The water, thirty feet deep at a distance 
of a few yards from the shore, will undermine at times 
one or two acres of woodland, which suddenly fall in, 
trees and all, and sink below the surface. It is no 
uncommon sight to see a tree-trunk sixty feet long, 
whose foundations have been cut away from the solid 
soil, fall roots first and, drawn down into the vortex 



3o6 B y- WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

by the still adhering mass of earth, sink perpendicularly 
out of sight. The effect produced along the steep banks 
of the river by this incessant wreck and disintegration of 
forests is most weird and sombre. Here a vast trunk 
tangled with debris lies slanting across the river bank; 
there the river has sapped a young grove of cotton-wood 
trees which have sunk in a mass, but still cling up- 
right in their native soil, their green tops projecting 
through the water; elsewhere, it may be, are half a 
dozen great trees slanting upward from the river bottom, 
where their roots still hold, sagging and sobbing in the 
current. But more unique shapes show the geologi- 
cal changes wrought by the river's swift waters. No 
matter where the Mississippi cuts its way, the bank 
shows the strata of mud and dirt left by successive 
floods, proving that the river once flowed there. Back 
from the banks from two to ten miles on either side 
are a series of lakes stretching down into Arkansas, 
Mississippi, and Louisiana. These lakes, sometimes 
twenty miles long, are invariably shaped like a horse- 
shoe, resembling the famous " Ox-bow " of the Con- 
necticut River below Northampton, in Massachusetts. 
They are old bends of the Mississippi cut off in pre- 
historic times, when the river burst through a narrow 
neck of land, and left his old bed for a new course. 
The " horseshoe " lakes abound in varieties of edible 
fish and many water-fowl. Among the latter the cor- 
morants, worthless as food, deserve mention for their 



THE FATHER OF WATERS. 307 

sagacious organization of fishing expeditions. Beginning 
in deep water, thousands of them form a semicircular 
line a mile long. At a given signal the birds begin 
to beat the water with feet and wings, driving the 
minnows and other small fish to shallow water. Gradu- 
ally the long line converges, and the fish, beaten together 
in shoals, become easy prey for the bird fishers. 

The horseshoe lakes must not be passed by without 
allusion to their peculiar fish life. Among their finny 
species is one that, in marking and shape, is almost the 
exact counterpart of the striped bass of our Northern salt 
waters. These Southern fish, however, have a thicker 
body, and live in fresh water through the year. They 
weigh from half a pound to five pounds each, and in the 
spring, when gathered in schools they dimple the surface 
of the lakes and bayous, they give the angler rare sport. 
Another fish in the horseshoe lakes much resembling our 
Northern black bass is dubbed " trout " by the natives. 
It differs from the Northern black bass in the lighter tint 
of its sides, its higher quality as food, its smaller head, and 
never, like its gamesome Northern relative, does it break 
water when hooked. But the veritable fishy curiosity of 
the horseshoe lakes is the " alligator gar," or " gar," as it 
is locally called for brevity. The gar sometimes reaches a 
weight of two hundred pounds. It has the head of the 
alligator mounted on the mailed body of the sturgeon. 
It is the shark of the lakes, feared even by human bathers, 
and feeding on ducks or water animals, and not infra- 



308 BY-H^AVS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

quently snapping away the string of fish which the angler 
is cooling in the water by his boat's side. Fishing for gar 
involves some original angling methods. The outfit con- 
sists of half-a-dozen bamboo rods tightly bound together, 
a colossal wooden reel, a cord matching a clothes-line in 
diameter and strength, and a hook three inches across the 
curve, welded from an iron rod. The fisherman in his 
anchored boat tosses over this shark hook covered with a 
junk of meat or a two-pound fish. The gar seizes the bait 
with a tug like an ox. If hooked — ^which happens seldom, 
for the gar's mouth is bony and hard — the fisherman ele- 
vates his mighty pole to an angle of forty degrees, plants 
his foot against the butt, hoists anchor, and lets the gar haul 
the boat over the lake for half an hour, after which the 
exhausted captive is drawn in and speared. The gar is 
useless for food, and is only taken now and then for sport. 
To the eye which is used to the trim and shapely 
steamers of our Eastern waters the Mississippi boats 
seem curious and clumsy craft. Let us take, as a fair 
specimen of them all, the Providence, a boat upon which 
the writer lately finished a river trip of five hundred miles. 
She belongs to the Anchor Line of St. Louis, a corpora- 
tion by far the largest of the river transportation compa- 
nies, owning twenty big boats plying to Memphis, Vicks- 
burg, and New Orleans. The corporation is the monopoly 
of the river, fixing its own rates and twisting chance com- 
petitors with an iron hand. The Providence, which we 
are describing as a typical Mississippi boat, is some two 



THE FA THER OF WA TERS. 3O9 

hundred and eighty feet long, with perhaps fifty feet 
beam. Her lower deck, when loaded, sinks within a few 
inches of the water. Above is a many-windowed struct- 
ure looking like a section of army barracks. Half-way up 
is the saloon, used also for dining, lined with state-rooms 
and fitted with that prime necessity of river life, a bar. 
In front of the saloon is a large observation deck, and 
behind is a cabin handsomely fitted up for lady travellers. 
Above, still, is the hurricane deck, surmounted by the 
pilot-house and two lofty smoke-stacks profusely orna- 
mented with iron filagree work or scalloping and their 
black mouths opening outward in the shape of a huge 
sun-flower. On the immense breadth of the lower deck 
is stowed the freight. ' Here also are the great high- 
pressure engines that have to be used to force the boat 
against the swift Mississippi current. The craft is of 
some fourteen hundred tons burthen, and draws, when 
loaded to the guards, only about six feet of water ; for in 
the dry season the river, though in its narrowest bends 
two hundred feet in depth, expands at places to shallows 
two miles wide and not more than seven feet deep in 
mid-channel. A singularly queer effect is given to these 
river boats by a modern innovation superseding the old 
gang-planks which used to be run out by hand. At the 
front of the craft on each side is hung slantwise in air by 
a movable derrick a broad gang-plank, fifty feet long, 
worked by steam. These two planks or, more correctly 
speaking, long platforms give the boat the likeness of a 



3 lO BY- IVA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

June bug seeking its prey. If the reader can imagine 
Noah's Ark diminished in size, mounted on a white mud- 
scow, and fitted with steam-pipes and the antennae referred 
to, he can get a fair idea of the artistic and nautical de- 
formities of the Mississippi steam-boat. But the craft 
makes fast time — sometimes, with the strong current, 
thirty miles an hour, — is commodious for freight, conven- 
ient for passengers, and its officers are courteous and 
obliging. The passenger is allowed the largest liberties 
on board, and can go on the hurricane deck or even into 
the pilot-house unrebuked and unforbidden. 

Perhaps the most picturesque character of the Missis- 
sippi boat is the pilot. He is no longer the rough and 
forbidding personage of early years, but a uniformed offi- 
cer, trim and gentlemanly. The test which he has to pass 
before he can take charge of a boat is a severe one. He 
must serve three years without pay as an apprentice, 
staying in the wheel-house night and day ; for hundreds 
of miles he must know every sand-bank in the stream, 
every clump of trees on the bank, every change in the 
depth of water. When he finally gets his certificate after 
a rigid examination before a board of old pilots, his 
knowledge of the ins and outs of the great river seems 
superhuman. On the darkest night he can trace the 
forest line of the monotonous shore; he knows by a 
peculiar foamy appearance that the river is rising, and by 
still more occult signs that it is falling; he reads the 
muddy, boiling surface like a book, and by the size and 



THE FATHER OF WATERS. S^^ 

Shape of the vortices tells the depth of water below. Two 
pilots on each boat serve at intervals of four hours each, 
and the steamer is rarely weather-bound except by a thick 

°The old rough life of the Mississippi steam-boat has, 
within a few years, been softened into the habit and 
routine of civilization. The red-hot boat-racing and 
gambling days are almost departed. A quiet test of two 
boats, each under a moderate and equal pressure of steam, 
or a genteel game of '' pedro for drinks " in the saloon, 
is all that remains on the regular passenger boats of the 
rough and ruf^anly past. But on the smaller craft plymg 
their short trips between near river points, the typical 
card-player may still be seen piling up his ivory counters 
-to be redeemed at the bar,-and, with the face of a 
sphynx, studying his poker-hand within an inch of his 
ruddy nose. On the Providence is a single memento of 
boat-racing-a pair of gilded stag's horns hung over the 
engine, with the legend: "From Columbus to Cairo m 
one hour and thirty-five minutes. Beat it and take the 
horns." The distance referred to is twenty-five miles, and 
the Providence made it against a strong current. 

The journey from St. Louis to Vicksburg or New Or- 
leans can now be made on the Mississippi steamer as re- 
spectably as on a Sound boat to Boston. One meets odd 
characters, of course. On the lower deck is a medley 
of emigrants, gypsies, poor whites, and negroes, and even 
on the saloon deck are found not a few whose chronic 



312 BV-fVAYS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

prejudice runs in favor of dirt and against shirt collars. 
Nevertheless, even these low whites have an innate cour- 
tesy which one misses from the same class in the East or 
in the West. Besides the inner life of the boat there 
are many external features of a Mississippi voyage to 
amuse and instruct. On the shores above the banks 
there is little variation. The river overflows them every 
year, preventing all cultivation, so that the land is given up 
to long reaches of dreary timber ; but the banks, with 
their wild gulches, their broken tree-trunks, their gnarled 
and twisted roots and masses of woody debris, make up a 
weird and changing spectacle that never tires the eye. On 
the river singular craft are continually met — now a 
Federal Survey boat, anon a floating photograph gallery, 
or, it may be, one of the vast stern-wheel cotton-boats, 
with six or seven thousand bales on board piled up to 
the smoke-stacks, and the whole looking like a huge for- 
tress on the water. The landings, so-called, are no land- 
ings at all — only a place where the boat runs aground 
against the high bank, without wharf or even pathway. 
A little clearing and a rough padlocked hut for a store- 
house alone mark the place. The big boat signals her 
coming with a double-bass whistle. A solitary biped on 
mule or horseback appears from the woods and unlocks 
the hut. The steamer, if bound downward, turns up- 
stream, runs her nose against the bank, swings out, by 
steam, one of her antennae, the colored roustabouts land a 
lot of freight, a bell rings, and again we are off. At 



THE FATHER OF WATERS. 313 

night all this is done by the aid of an electric light and 
reflector, worked from the pilot-house, which shed a lurid 
and fantastic glare along the shore. The green light, and 
the deck-hands, burdens on shoulder, wending their way 
up the plank, reproduce most vividly the theatrical scene 
in " Rip Van Winkle," when the goblins come upon the 
poor wanderer in the Catskills. 

At the time these lines are penned the great stream 
from St. Louis down is at a stage of uncommonly low 
water. Where the river in flood-time is forty or fifty 
feet deep, it is now scarcely navigable for craft drawing 
six feet. Below as well as above Memphis, steamers with 
cargoes on board worth hundreds of thousands of dollars 
are constantly stranding, and are only pulled off at much 
cost and delay. Perversely, too, this low period of the 
waters comes annually just when the cotton crops are 
moved and when river trade is brisk with the New Orleans 
merchants, to whom the bulk of the staple in the Mis- 
sissippi and tributary valleys is consigned. It is but nat- 
ural that at such a juncture everybody in the valley 
should be discussing the improvement of the river for 
navigation, the new Government works, the efficiency of 
the levees, the possibility of saving "washed" banks, and 
the effects of diverting the river current. The writer has 
talked fully on all these points with river pilots, captains 
of the steam-boats, planters, and civil engineers actually 
employed on the levee works. The diversity of opinion 
among them is simply astounding. Some oppose any 



314 £y- ^A YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

levees at all, others want a great system of levees from 
Cairo to New Orleans, costing at least fifty million dollars. 
Some want the river's bottom lowered by dredging ; others 
aver that this plan would be fatal to navigation. Particu- 
larly on the scheme for straightening the river's course by 
cutting off the bends are opinions most confused and vari- 
ous. Men living along the river and having common in- 
terests — for example, the planter class — differ among 
themselves not less radically than people whose interests 
are partly opposed to each other, and the civil engineers 
are as much at loggerheads as the rest. Out of this babel 
of opinion, speculation, and theory, it is difficult to ex- 
tract much that is substantial, or do more than state the 
difficulties which cross the plans for improving the greatest 
natural highway of our country's water trade. 

Let us begin with the alphabet of the problem. If the 
reader were to land at almost any point between St. Louis 
and New Orleans, he would find that his foot, wherever it 
touched the bare earth, would sink mto a peculiar viscid 
mud, tenacious as glue. Walking where leaves have fallen 
from the trees, this mud at every step would pick up a 
mass of vegetation, until at last his feet would appear like 
a pair of animated door-mats. Let him step next into a 
shallow puddle of water, say half an inch deep. The 
mud dissolves like snow, the vegetable debris drops off 
as if by magic, and the foot is free once more. I have 
often wondered at the marvellous facility with which this 
mud, usually so tense and, when sun-dried, hard as rock, 



THE FATHER OF WATERS. 3^5 

melts at the water's touch. This peculiar mire, so soluble 
in water, extends all along the lower Mississippi. Some- 
times it is intermixed with a light porous sand, and now 
and then it changes to a hard blue clay, but both these 
also yield to water readily. Almost nowhere does one 
find banks of natural rock, and scarcely a gravel-bed can 
be discovered along the whole course of the stream from 
Memphis to the Gulf. 

Now conceive the longest river in the world, with a 
current of four or five miles an hour, turned loose in a 
valley of this alluvial soil. The immediate valley is some 
forty miles wide and fifteen hundred miles long, with vast 
areas of lowland, and little or no ascent until the distant 
upland regions are reached. To say that such a river will 
be muddy is a feeble phrase to express the fact about the 
Mississippi. Its waters are simply saturated with soil all 
the year round. So thoroughly infiltrated is the stream 
with the clayey particles that the water can be purified 
only with the utmost difficulty, either by filtering or stag- 
nation. On the river boats the dark water is drunk with- 
out hesitation, and, though revolting to the eye, there is no 
offence to the taste. Men who live on the river's banks 
say they can discover with the eye no difference from one 
month to another in the turbidness of the flood. The 
swift current turned against a bank cuts it as a knife cleaves 
cheese. A part of the soil thus taken up falls at once to 
the bottom, as soon as the current slackens. Often a 
slowing of half a mile an hour at a point a mile or two below 



3l6 BV-M^AVS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

a washed bank means the forming of a great sand-shoal. 
These shoals will rise as if by enchantment. A steamer 
will ground across stream. She draws six or seven feet, 
yet in thirty-six hours there will be formed in the eddy 
below her keel a sand-bank reaching to the water's sur- 
face. If she swings unevenly on this bank, she is in con- 
stant danger of " breaking her back," as the river phrase 
goes. A bank formed in this manner around a steamer 
may sometimes keep her aground in her muddy bonds 
for months. The ice floating down from the Mississippi's 
upper waters usually sinks with its muddy accumulation 
before it reaches Memphis, and an old steam-boat captain 
relates that he has been startled at apparently striking bot- 
tom on this mud-ice where the lead showed several fathoms 
of water. Examples might thus be multiplied to show the 
enormous amount of earthy matter suspended in the 
Mississippi's flood, not to mention the unmeasured deposits 
at the great river's delta, or remoter facts which concern 
the geological history of the valley ; and to all these 
must be added as obstacles to improvement the still 
grander and more complex phenomena attending the 
great periodical floods of spring-time, when the snow at 
the head-waters melts, and the lower stream bursts its 
banks. 

In the light of local opinion it may be worth while to pass 
in rapid survey the theories of improvement that have 
thus far been broached. One theory suggests the quick- 
ening of the current of the river, either by straightening 



THE FATHER OF WATERS. 317 

its course — thus increasing the grade of fall — or by dredg- 
ing its mouth and lower waters. It is argued by the ad- 
vocates of this plan that the swifter current would more 
quickly relieve the spring overflow and would scour out a 
deeper and more fixed channel. The opponents deny that 
any straightening of the river can be permanent, owing to 
the immense deposits of mud at slack-current points, 
which, they say, will throw the current right or left against 
the banks, causing the " wash " which in time necessarily 
forms an elbow in the stream. They allege also a second 
obstacle — namely, that quickening the current will drain 
the river off too rapidly to allow it to hold a navigable 
depth at the low-water period. A third obstacle to this 
scheme, as well as to the whole system of levees, was sug- 
gested a few days ago by a river planter who has suffered 
greatly by the overflows and who seemed sceptical as to 
any plan at all. " The people who favor these schemes," 
he said, " forget the great deposits which the river leaves 
at the spring flood in the bayous and on the lowlands. 
Restrain the overflow in any way, and what follows? 
Simply that the river must take away all this surplus mud. 
I don't believe the Mississippi can do it. That mud would 
be left to form big banks at slack-water points ; and when 
the river falls we shall have worse shoals than we have 
now ; and then, when the next flood comes, the river bot- 
tom will be higher, and we shall only have to go to work 
and build bigger levees than before." 
The scheme which, on the whole, seems to meet with 



3l8 BY-fVAYS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

least adverse criticism is that of a system of jetties like 
those at the Mississippi's mouth, built by Captain Eads. 
Simply outlined, the expedient is that of laying down at 
the shallows of the river converging lines of sunken willow 
mattresses between which it is believed the current will 
scour out a sufficient channel. Even this plan is depreci- 
ated. To increase the central current within the jetties, 
it is declared, will lessen the current outside of them, and 
thus deposit two large banks, which will lift the spring 
floods high over the adjacent lowlands. It is furthermore 
averred that this jetty system would be very costly, and 
probably increase the necessity for levees. Indeed, 
throughout the whole discussion of this difficult question 
of Mississippi improvements it is curious to find how the 
twin problems of restraining the spring floods and by the 
same plan securing navigable low-water in the autumn 
Constantly run counter to each other. I once knew the 
case of a man who met with a bad flesh-wound under the 
knee. If the surgeons let the wound heal, the cicatrix 
contracted the leg; if they straightened the limb, the 
wound was drawn open and healing was delayed. The 
Mississippi River theorists seem to flounder in much the 
same dilemma. At other points also there are some 
strange paradoxes. Let me cite a single case : Back of 
the river front at Sunnyside, Arkansas, some four miles 
from the stream, lives a well-to-do planter whose cotton 
farm faces a bayou and a long lake. During the floods of 
the spring of 1882, the waters of the lake rose and 



THE FATHER OF WATERS. 319 

threatened a ruinous overflow of his plantation and dwell- 
ing. With a large force of negroes, wading often waist- 
deep in the water, he night and day fought the rising flood 
by strengthening his levee along the lake front. At last 
came a high wind, dashing the destructive waters against 
the levee ; and utterly discouraged he removed his family, 
stopped work, and waited next day for the hews that his 
farm was under water. But instead came the cheering re- 
port that the waters had suddenly fallen six inches, and 
that his property was safe. The truth was that the levee 
of Bolivar County, Mississippi, on the opposite side of the 
river, and some twenty miles up-stream, had broken dur- 
ing the night, relieving the Arkansas shore, but carrying 
wholesale wreck and ruin among the Mississippi planta- 
tions. The familiar proverb of the ill wind that blows 
somebody good was literally realized, and the levees that, 
so long as they protected the Bolivar planters, threatened 
woe to the planters of Arkansas, by their own wreck saved 
the Arkansas cotton farms. And this case suggests a by 
no means uncommon anomaly along the Mississippi. 

After sifting the opinions of pilots, captains, planters, 
and engineers, up and down the river, the conclusion 
reached is that a vast deal of the present work on the 
Mississippi is, and must necessarily be, experimental. The 
Federal Government will have apparently to lay out a 
great sum in the initial tests that are to lead up to a more 
costly and comprehensive plan. It seems pretty evident, 
too, that if that plan is to be undertaken at all, the Fed- 



320 BY-IFAYS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

eral Government must stand behind it. Poor States like 
Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana have seemingly 
neither the means nor the concert needed to assume the 
undertaking, though they may be able materially to assist 
it. This, at least, is the burden of the opinion one hears 
along the river, and Mississippians particularly broach the 
subject with bitter earnestness, declaring their willing- 
ness to sink politics and every thing else to gain the de- 
sired end. Even the men who find fault with every im- 
provement scheme yet proposed are as vociferous as the 
rest for some plan of Federal expenditure. Their reason- 
ing, however, is clear enough. The Government works 
on the banks have distributed much money along the 
river, and in an autumn like this of 1882, when the 
lowland cotton crop is all but a failure, have filled an 
aching void of empty pockets. It is, after all, no 
new illustration of human nature that men sceptical 
about the curbing of the Mississippi's waters should be 
fixed believers in the local benefits of abundant and well- 
paid labor. In justice, however, it must be said that these 
absolute sceptics are few in number, and that most people 
along the river are confident that the permanent improve- 
ment of their great water-way is only a question of dol- 
lars and days — albeit a good many of both. 



THE SHOESTRING DISTRICT; A POLIT- 
ICAL RETROSPECT. 

TRENDING for several hundred miles along the 
western edge of the State of Mississippi, and 
bordering the river of the same name, is a line of lowland 
counties, famous for the production of cotton and filled 
with an immense negro population. Several causes tend 
to keep the white population of these river counties 
sparse. The region is peculiarly unhealthy for whites, 
for swampy lowlands, the river deposits, and the intense 
heats of summer beating down on decaying vegetation, 
all make the district miasmatic and breed the germs of the 
terrible swamp fever, more deadly and more feared than 
even Yellow Jack himself. Then, again, the plantation sys- 
tem remains, as regards the preponderance of negro 
labor, much as it was before the war, one planter employ- 
ing perhaps two or three hundred negro hands. This 
long string of counties was thrown into one Congressional 
district when in 1876 the Democrats overthrew the Ames 
government of Mississippi, gained control of the executive 
and legislative branches, and gerrymandered the State; 
and from its sinuous length and narrowness, it took the 
appropriate name of the " Shoestring " District. The 
actual voting strength of the district on a full and 
321 



322 B Y- WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

fair ballot never yet has been tested. But probably its 
voting population numbers about thirty thousand, of 
whom twenty-four thousand are negroes, giving that race 
a clear majority of eighteen thousand. The Shoestring 
District has now passed into history with the redistricting 
of the State in the winter of 1 88 1-2, when the line of 
river counties was cut into two parts. But the name 
still survives, and is a fitting title under which to describe 
the carpet-bag era in Mississippi and the political sequels 
of it which one finds in the State to-day. 

Before entering upon the story of political convulsion in 
Mississippi, let me venture to say that the writer of this 
letter is a resident of the North, a New Englander, 
and an independent in politics, who has usually acted 
with the Republican party. His aim is to extenuate 
neither the subversion by the whites of a free ballot, nor 
the evils of misrule by the blacks ; but simply to give an 
unvarnished narrative of the facts. 

When the State of Mississippi was reorganized after the 
war, it offered a most promising field for the political 
adventurer. The State, in spite of some devastation 
by the conflicting armies in the northern and river coun- 
ties, remained rich in productive com and cotton lands. 
Its debt was and still is insignificant for a State of its 
size, and the great negro majority of not less than 
thirty thousand votes made the white property-hold- 
ing class, already stunned by the war and the loss of their 
slaves, still more lethargic as to their political rights. 



THE SHOESTRING DISTRICT. 323 

When they reflect soberly on that early period of civic 
reconstruction which followed the hybrid and chaotic 
Administration of Andrew Johnson and began with that 
of Grant, Mississippians are disposed now to charge them- 
selves with too much supineness and apathy. They con- 
cede that materially it would have been far better had 
they entered actively the political field. Some of them 
even go so far as to wish they had then joined the Re- 
publicans and trusted the Grant Administration for those 
favors which it afterward threw so recklessly and hurt- 
fully to the men of the Casey, Packard, Spencer, and 
Elliot stripe. Whatever might have been, the fact 
remains that the white property-holders and men of 
influence in Mississippi stood aloof, tilling their cotton- 
fields in a petty and half-hearted way, and that a horde of 
political adventurers rushed into public office. 

That many of these political pirates came from the North 
cannot be questioned ; and the chief leaders of what came 
to be known as the " carpet-bag" party were undoubtedly 
of that class. But far outnumbering them numerically were 
their indigenous henchmen, low whites, " yellows," and 
negro politicians of Mississippi, as shrewd as they were 
selfish, who, living in immediate contact with their race, 
did far more than the carpet-baggers proper in keeping up 
its political organization. Of the new-comers from the 
North some few came in the spirit of Servosse, as depicted 
in the " Fool's Errand." They entered the State bearing 
capital, ready to take up at the then low prices the smaller 



324 BY-fVAVS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

cotton farms, treat the negro fairly or even philanthropi- 
cally, and grow up with the new life of the Southern 
country. But this class quickly divided into two extremes. 
A part were seduced into politics, and became the worst 
of carpet-bag leaders ; the others joined the Democrats 
and became the foremost of " bull-dozers " ; while the large 
majority of the new-comers were low politicians of just 
about the class to be found among the ward politicians of 
the New York Custom-house during Grant's Administra- 
tion. Then the tide of misrule quickly ran to its height. 
The power of the President shielded it, and it was abetted 
by that system of bad Federal appointments which made 
Grant's Southern policy scarcely less disreputable at the 
North than it was in Mississippi. A French resident of 
the State, a Union man during the war, and a most dis- 
passionate and intelligent talker on the whole subject of 
reconstruction, has given me some vivid and revolting 
descriptions of the few years of carpet-bag government 
that followed. The colored vote was skilfully organized 
under the white captains of fifties and the colored cap- 
tains of tens. Every negro church became a focal point 
of political activity. Democratic negroes, what few there 
were, were ostracized mercilessly by their fellows, and the 
term " white man's nigger " became an epithet that they 
were taught to dread. The scenes in the negro Legisla- 
ture at the State Capitol in Jackson during those days, as 
described to me, rivalled the worst spectacles of the Moses 
Legislature during the darkest hours of carpet-bag sway 



THE SHOESTRING DISTRICT. 325 

in South Carolina. Fortunately, perhaps, for Mississippi, 
her financial reputation had been so blasted by the repudi- 
ation of the notes of her State bank thirty or forty years 
ago that no great State debt could be negotiated. But 
the power of county and municipal taxation was a large 
one, and was abused excessively. In some counties dur- 
ing this period of predatory legislation the taxes went up 
to five per centum on a full valuation ; and in Vicks- 
burg, for example, the debt reached one third of the tax- 
able value of all the property in the city. 

Lest this portrayal of the evils of the time may seem 
overdrawn or distempered by Southern fancy, let me draw 
on testimony which, on its own merits, must be conclusive. 
In the southeast corner of Arkansas, on the Mississippi 
River, is the county of Chicot. The negro vote of the 
county outnumbers the white vote some ten to one, and 
the political condition of affairs has been almost the exact 
counterpart of that in the Shoestring District of Missis- 
sippi, on the opposite shore. To this county of Chicot 
there went some fourteen years ago two Kentuckians, 
father and son, to take charge of a large plantation near 
the river bank. The son had been graduated with high 
honors at the University of New York; the father had 
been a citizen of prominence in his native State ; and both 
had served with distinction through the Civil War as 
officers in the Union Army. A few years later they were 
joined by two other sons who had just been graduated at 
Yale. All the family had been staunch Republicans, and 



326 B Y. WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

the three brothers who have survived their father are still 
so on all national questions. The testimony of men of 
this cultivated and intelligent stamp, after many years on 
a Southern plantation, is too valuable to be omitted. 
Here it is as I heard it from their own lips: 

" We came to the plantation, not merely with the hope 
" of making money, but of uplifting the negroes. We 
" hoped that, as Republicans, we might exercise influence 
" over them. We found that hope delusive. We tried to 
" persuade our own hands to put up good men for office, 
" or at least vote for good men when nominated. It was 
" like talking to stones. The very negroes who trusted us 
" implicitly in money matters, would listen in dogged si- 
" lence, then go off and vote heedless of our advice. They 
"were then under the influence of carpet-baggers and 
" Southern whites who drank with them, lived in their 
" company, and were on an even grade of social equality ; 
" and we found that unless we lowered our conduct to 
" the same level, the hope of obtaining influence with 
" the race was an empty one. Meanwhile our county 
" and other local taxes ran up to the verge of confisca- 
" tion. In 1872 we valued our plantation at $70,000; 
" that year our local taxes were $6,900, or almost ten 
" per centum. Under these circumstances there was 
" only one thing to do in local and State politics — act with 
" the Democrats ; and subsequently, by appeals to the 
" Democratic Legislature and to the courts, we got some 
" relief. But negro politics in this county, which is still 



THE SHOESTRING DISTRICT. 32/ 

" controlled by the colored men, are intolerably bad in 
" spite of our utmost efforts to correct them. The negro 
" schools particularly, for which we are heavily taxed, 
" are a mere farce. For one school in this school-district 
"a few of us pay a tax of about $1,200 yearly. The 
" school-house is open only two months in a year, and the 
" funds are systematically squandered." 

This school-house, by the way, the writer himself ex- 
amined — a miserable, battered one-story affair, scarcely fit 
for a bonfire. An inquiry as to the number of colored 
voters in Chicot County who could read and write brought 
out an estimate of one in twenty. This proportion would, 
no doubt, be increased if we were to count the negroes 
who can spell out a fe\y words or do a trifling sum in set- 
tling their cotton-accounts with the planters ; but the 
estimate is probably a fair one for the colored voters who 
can actually read a newspaper or book. The figures given 
for negro illiteracy in Chicot County represent a fair esti- 
mate also for the Shoestring counties of Mississippi ; but 
it is only fair to say that the negroes of the river districts, 
recruited constantly from the miserable roustabouts of the 
steam-boats, are probably the most unlettered of their race 
in the whole South. 

The result of the abuses described was that " shotgun " 
policy which, at the time it was adopted in Mississippi 
and in South Carolina, created so great a stir throughout 
the Northern States. On careful inquiry I am convinced 
that the horrors of that expedient by which the Ames 



328 B Y- WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

government was crushed through the suppression of the 
negro vote have been not a whit exaggerated. The sto- 
ries of the picketing of the roads by armed whites, the 
shotgun watch of the ballot-boxes, the fraud, the intimi- 
dation, and bloodshed are substantially true. " Bull- 
dozing," in fact, had many more effective refinements 
than the shotgun. Negroes were paid double wages to 
stay at home on election-day, merchants who supplied 
them threatened to stop their cotton-credits, and every 
device, including actual purchase, was used to supplement 
violence. It seems strange, in a civilized country and in 
one of the States of our Union, to hear Mississippians 
boast of their part in a policy which has nullified a free 
ballot and absolutely subverted constitutional law. Why 
the negroes, with as ample a supply of shotguns in their 
homes as the whites, did not resist may mystify North- 
erners. The reason of this was that the leaders had been 
" fixed," as the Southern expression is, long before elec- 
tion-day. As a rule, they had been driven away oi* so 
thoroughly intimidated that they made no attempt to 
organize ; and without organization by some superior 
mind the Southern negro is helpless as a baby. The 
negroes, moreover, of the rank and file were disgusted 
with those long-unfulfilled promises of their leaders, of 
which one, the famous " forty acres and a mule," had a 
national celebrity. Many of them saw with complacency 
the defeat of men who had given them nothing but 
broken pledges. As to the broader moral aspects of a 



THE SHOESTRING DISTRICT. 329 

revolution which met wrong with wrong, Mississippians 
say : " We merely protected our property and our homes. 
You Northern men, in like conditions, would have done 
the same." As to this reasoning, each man must, of 
course, form his individual opinion. 

With the transfer of power to the Democrats by that 
shotgun revolution, the Republican party, as such, ended 
its existence in Mississippi. The negroes, as a rule, with 
their leaders expelled or subjugated, have been utterly 
incapable of organization. They rarely talk politics, take 
little interest in elections, and when they do vote, at least 
a third of them cast Democratic ballots as a favor to their 
white employers. Sometimes they come out in petty 
local contests; but, generally speaking, even in strong 
negro counties, they are lethargic. The whites usually 
allow them to vote ; but Mississippians have confessed to 
me that the whites, when the result is worth it, are pretty 
apt to " doctor " the returns ; a thing very practicable so 
long as Democrats are in control of the ballot-boxes and 
tally-sheets. Curiously enough, too, now that carpet- 
baggism is disestablished, the whites themselves appear 
very indifferent to politics. State or national. They pro- 
fess, I think sincerely, to subordinate every thing to the 
development of the material resources of the State. I 
find, for example, all along the river that Democrats say 
they would vote for a Republican for President rather 
than imperil the improvement of the stream by Federal 
money. As to the ostracism socially of Northern settlers, 



330 BV.fVAVS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

it is and has been greatly exaggerated. The three broth- 
ers to whom I have referred, for instance, have always 
been on most intimate terms with the white Democrats 
of Chicot County. But this would scarcely be possible 
for any Northern settler who entered into close political 
relations with the blacks. He would be allowed to vote, 
and his vote would probably be counted ; but social rec- 
ognition, so long as he made personal fellowship with the 
negro, would probably be refused him. Practically, a 
phrase or two like the "Yankee ticket" — i. e.. Repub- 
lican ticket — have been all the evidences of the old sec- 
tional antagonism that appear above the surface. Under- 
neath, however, there smoulders not so much hatred of 
the North as fears of the recurrence of carpet-bag rule. 
This cropped out once in the talk of a prominent citizen 
of Vicksburg who, referring to the effort of the notorious 
Chalmers to *' Mahoneize " Mississippi and array race 
against race anew, said to me : " In that case, all we have 
to do is to organize our (shotgun) party, as we did seven 
years ago." 

Such is the sad and sombre picture which any fair- 
minded man who has been on the spot must draw of the 
political revolution in the Shoestring district and the State 
of Mississippi — a revolution which, by methods more or 
less tragic, has subverted the brief carpet-bag dynasties 
in other Southern States. Looking back now on that 
strange and anomalous series of political events, it is, 
perhaps, hard to draw rigidly the line of right and wrong 



THE SHOESTRING DISTRICT. 331 

between the races. But, as a personal opinion, I must 
assert that even in a New England State the same 
sort of convulsion would soon or late have resisted the 
same legislative assault upon the rights of property. 
The revolution in Mississippi was indeed only the logical 
outcome of the misguided partisan policy which, after 
the Civil War, enfranchised at the South predominant 
ignorance. 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 

ANY Northern man who, in these days, makes a 
prolonged trip through the South must, of 
course, be ready to make allowances for the material 
flaws which he sees. The havoc of war, the loss of 
slave-property, the transition to. a system of free labor, 
the carpet-bag era, must continually be kept in sight 
as obstacles in the work of upbuilding the South. But 
making all due concession to these obstructive influences, 
there will remain a surplus of disappointment. I am not 
speaking now of what quoted figures of the census may 
seem to reveal, or of the absolute progress of many 
Southern communities — Northern Georgia, Texas, and 
part of Florida, for example, leave nothing to be desired 
in the rate of their recent material growth. I refer 
rather to general signs, which express themselves directly 
to the sight, leaving painful impressions of Southern 
backwardness, and all the more disquieting because they 
imply inherited faults of Southern character. 

Let us draw a rough picture of the ordinary Southern 
plantation home as one finds it to-day, eighteen years 
since the close of the war. It is usually a stately two- 
story structure, pillared in front, rarely ornate as to 
architecture, and with rather an impressive air of aristo- 
332 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 333 

cratic comfort. But examine it closer, with more atten- 
tion to detail ! The paint is worn off, and long weather- 
marks cross its front. The cornices and mouldings are 
fast rotting to decay. Here and there in the upper 
story is a broken window. The shingles are moss-grown, 
and the chimney is rough-edged from disintegration of 
mortar and brick. The great front yard of several acres, 
which used to reach out far before this antique dwelling 
to the street or roadway, has been cut in twain by a cross 
fence, reducing it to half its old surface. The rows of trees 
are rough and untrimmed. Ducks, geese, pigs, and a 
gaunt horse wander through the door-yard, making its 
slope as rugged as a pasture. A scattered pile of wood 
within a circumference- of chips is a side-scar on the 
scene. Battered fences, a musty-looking clump of out- 
houses, a barn-yard where one or two dismal mules are 
meditating, fill out the picture of shabby grandeur. 

The owner of this typical mansion is usually a gentle- 
man — and a real one — whose outward aspect is not much 
different from that of a well-to-do Yankee or New Yorker , 
who has been born and bred in the country. But he 
is far more courteous and polite, not merely as an art, 
but as a genuine element of his character. His kindness 
to a guest is not a formality but a hearty, voluntary 
impulse— even when carried to a point which we at 
the North would regard as absurdly sacrificial. No in- 
convenience is too burdensome, no hospitality too un- 
stinted to be refused a guest. The planter's own time, 



334 B Y. WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

his family plans, his horses, his guns, his fishing-rods, 
must all be at the visitor's full disposal. Let me be 
absolutely just to Southern character, and say that the 
same courtesy extends to the stranger met on the road 
or railway train, and that in less degree the same innate 
politeness is shown even by the poor Southern whites. I 
have often been amazed at the natural courtesy both of 
speech and manner of some unkempt native of the South 
whom, at the North, we would set down as a common 
tramp. Southern chivalry has its deep-rooted and detest- 
able faults, some of which will be touched upon before 
this chapter closes; but among its best qualities must 
be cited graces of common social intercourse, extending 
down through all classes, which the Northerner rarely 
finds matched in his own communities. 

Personally speaking, this quality is most attractive. 
But economically the kindly social habits generated dur- 
ing the slave times, inherited from fathers and still per- 
petuated, are a fearful bar to material progress. Well 
enough they were, perhaps, when the planter had large sur- 
plus wealth in human stock, and when the sale of one or 
two negroes might fill the gap in the annual interest on a 
mortgage. But the system is fatal now, when industry, 
watchfulness, and household economy are the only condi- 
tions on which the plantation can be saved from the credi- 
tor. If, after seeing lately many plantations in the Missis- 
sippi Valley, I were to be asked what is the chief obstacle 
to Southern progress, the answer would be the wasteful ex- 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 335 

travagance caused by too much sociability — an extrava- 
gance penetrating the whole of the planter's life. The 
methodical Yankee, accustomed to close and systematic 
management, would be profoundly amazed at the way the 
ordinary planter " runs " a plantation of, say, a thousand 
acres, with a hundred negro hands. It is a vast and rami- 
fied interest, as intricate as a big New England factory. 
Yet the planter scarcely ever keeps a set of plantation 
books. His costly implements of cotton culture — ploughs, 
harrows, and cultivators — are constantly seen rusting in 
the fields, just where the negro hands have left them 
months before. He may be staggering under an annual 
interest charge, yet he must have his horses for pleasure, 
his costly guns, and expensive double wagons, to be worn 
out quickly on rough rutted roads, upon which a Yankee 
millionaire would scarcely use a buckboard. The younger 
planters, too, seem to think it essential to human exist- 
ence that they should *' treat " frequently, gamble a little, 
and buy a few lottery tickets each year (I may add paren- 
thetically just here that the Louisiana State Lottery is 
one of the economic banes of the whole Mississippi 
Valley merely from its effects on character). To sum up 
the whole matter in a sentence, this ancestral and mis- 
guided sociability of the planter, to which we give the 
hackneyed name of ** Southern hospitality," is too often 
more like the last splendid banquet of a bankrupt on the 
verge of ruin than rational liberality. A very ordinary 
New Englander would make a good living out of what 
the planter habitually wastes. 



336 BY-IVAYS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

Political economy grinds in the end as surely as the 
gods. The inevitable result of this prodigality and loose 
management is debt, bad credit, and enormous rates of 
interest. Under ordinary conditions, the rate of interest 
would be high in the South, where the negro is improvi- 
dent, cotton crops and prices very uncertain quantities 
from year to year, and loanable capital scarce. For ex- 
ample, in the whole city of New Orleans there is said to 
be only some $io,ooo,<x»o of capital to be lent planters 
who produce an annual crop of cotton alone worth $60,- 
0(X),ooo. But, add systematic laxity in working planta- 
tions to the foregoing natural elements of high interest, 
and the rates which the planter has to pay the factor for 
necessary loans become terrible. Counting commissions of 
all kinds, it often amounts to twenty-five per centum a 
year on the loan, while banks in towns on the lower Mis- 
sissippi find no difficulty in getting two and one half per 
centum a month for short advances in cash ; and all loans, 
short or long, it must be remembered, are secured by 
mortgage on plantation properties, with large nominal 
margins. Other causes which are obstructing the plant- 
er's progress are the cotton-worm and the great cotton 
product of Texas, a State which has become a sort of 
marplot among other cotton commonwealths, keeping 
down the price even in a year when the crop is a bad one 
throughout the Mississippi Valley. What wonder, under 
all these circumstances, that the debt-owing planter longs 
for cheap Northern capital to come down and " develop " 
the country! 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 237 

That this Northern capital will go down ultimately, 
when so high rates of interest and also good returns on 
landed investments can be secured, is certain. But it will 
go down far quicker if the South will first take a warning 
or two from Northern civilization. One lesson the South 
has yet to learn is the prompt enforcement of law against 
crimes of violence ; for it is the bald truth that murder 
and lesser crimes go unpunished so often that sometimes 
it seems as if law were exceptional and crime the natural 
order. About one year ago I was on a Mississippi boat 
ascending the river. Out of the thirty passengers on 
board three were murderers. One of these, whose wife 
had been grossly insulted, had followed the offender for 
several hundred miles to Greenville, Miss., deliberately 
emptied two gun-barrels loaded with buckshot into his 
victim, and then gone up to the quivering body and shot 
off every barrel of two revolvers into it — " made a lead 
mine of him," as the act was picturesquely described. 
The slayer was brought before the Mayor of Greenville 
and discharged. To speak frankly, so terrible had been the 
provocation that it may be doubted whether a Northern 
jury would have convicted him ; but would he not at least 
have been tried by a jury? On the same boat were a 
hoary gambler who a little while before had shot a rival 
player over a card-table, and an insignificant, shock-headed 
young fellow who, when dunned by a creditor, had 
settled the debt conclusively by shooting the man as 
he sat inoffensively on a cotton bale. An Arkansas jury 



338 BV-JVAYS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

had acquitted the debtor, and as for the gambler, he 
had never been tried. So, also, awhile ago I was in 
the near neighborhood of another tragedy. A plantation 
manager had been threatened by a negro. The white 
man took a gun and shot the negro, who was running 
away, inflicting a wound which, at my last reports, was 
expected to be fatal. I heard at least a dozen white 
people, at one time and another, discussing this crime, and 
the universal sentiment was one of sympathy for the 
criminal. The worst of this thing is, however, that 
Southern feeling in favor of making crime odious does not 
seem to perceptibly increase ; and Southerners need as 
yet to be duly impressed with Northern sentiment on 
these matters of free murder, carrying concealed arms, 
and general lawlessness. 

One of the most curious of the anomalies of Southern 
society is the strong religious spirit often prevalent in 
communities where these crimes of violence, repudiation 
of debts, and other misdeeds are rampant. The very set 
of people who are persistent church-goers, and recognize 
no epithet so vile as " atheist," have few compunctions as 
to shooting, fewer still as to casting the ballot which goes 
to cheat a Northern creditor out of his State bond. It 
reminds one of the phrase attributed to the Texan : 
" Wife, give me my pistol ; I 'm going to prayer-meeting 
to-night." 

A striking yet logical sequel of the high rates for money 
— as well as commodities — at the South has been the in- 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 339 

flux of Jewish traders into all grades of traffic from itiner- 
ant peddling up to the large store for plantation supplies. 
In the towns and small cities of the lower Mississippi val- 
ley the posterity of Abraham have well-nigh monopolized 
smaller trades, and at Vicksburg it seems as though every 
business thoroughfare were an offshoot of Chatham Street. 
In the straits of the cotton farmer and the thriftless igno- 
rance of the negro these " cent, per cent," Israelites find 
a field of traffic as profitable to themselves as it is ruinous 
to their customers. 

Nevertheless, when all that is negative has been said, 
there remain many wholesome and encouraging signs. 
One is the really rapid decline of sectional animosity, now 
that the predatory carpet-bagger has been driven out. 
Politics are everywhere in a decline, and the South, so 
far as feeling goes, is ardently seeking material growth. 
Scarcely anywhere to-day would a Northern Republican 
be ostracized, provided he goes about his business, be- 
haves himself, and does nothing worse politically than 
vote the Republican ticket. As for slavery, the feeling is 
also very rational. Naturally there is regret for loss, and 
wistful glances back to the days of comparative opulence ; 
but rarely does one find a Southerner who will assert that 
he wants the slave system, with its immoralities, back. 
The "institution," which used to seem to him Scripture- 
founded, is remembered now with only a poetic regret, 
often expressed in verse, story, or song, whose burden is 
the good old times. 



340 BY-PFAYS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

To say nothing of up-growth of cotton factories and 
other industries the planter has received a big " lift " from 
the cotton-seed industry. Before the war practically all 
cotton seed went to waste, except a small fraction used as 
manure and what was reserved for planting. Every 
bale of cotton represents about a thousand pounds of 
seed, worth at the gin, say, six dollars. Assuming that 
each acre grows half a bale of cotton — a low estimate — 
and that half the seed product is reserved for planting, 
there will be a net product for each acre of a dollar and a 
half, which was substantially lost in the old times. Within 
a few years the industry of making cotton-seed oil has in- 
creased immensely, until the manufactured product in oil 
and oil-cake is estimated as worth ten million dollars. As 
is well known, the oil is often substituted for olive oil in 
table use, while the cake is exported in large quantities 
to be used for cattle feed. The industry is a peculiarly 
ingenious one. First, the seed is taken into a fine-combed 
gin and the short cotton left by the plantation gins pulled 
away. This produces about thirty pounds of short staple 
cotton to each ton of seed, worth six cents a pound. The 
seeds are then hulled by machinery, the kernels ground into 
meal, which is heated to a certain point, then placed in 
tough sacks and run into an hydraulic press, which extracts 
the oil, leaving the yellow meal in hard cakes. The meal 
is not unpleasant to the taste, much resembling buckwheat 
flour, and I have heard of its use for human food. Each 
ton of seed ultimately produces about thirty gallons of 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 341 

oil, worth at this time forty-five cents a gallon ; eight 
hundred pounds of cake, worth twenty-two dollars a ton ; 
lint cotton, worth a dollar and eighty cents ; besides soap 
material derived from the refining, and the hulls, which 
may be used both for fuel in the factory and as compost. 
Both the home and foreign demand for oil-seed products 
is increasing rapidly, and the factories are said to pay 
large dividends. But like cotton itself, cotton seed is 
a crop much wasted and abused. Every sack of seed 
seems to have a leaking hole in it, and at Memphis, all 
along the sloping river bank, the voyager has to fairly wade 
through several inches of putrid decaying seed ere he 
reaches the wharf boats. As to cotton, a single glance at 
the tattered, half-covered bales, soiled with mud or soaked 
with rain, is enough to prove how shiftlessly the crop 
is treated. 

Finally, as to wholesome signs at the South, the 
annexed figures are suggestive, as showing the break up 
of the big farms and partial disestablishment of the plan- 
tation system : 





Average Size 


f Farms. 


No. of Farms. 




(Acres. 










1870. 


1880. 


1870. 


1880. 


Alabama 


. 222 


139 


67,382 


135,864 


Arkansas 


. 154 


128 


49,424 


94,433 


Florida 


. 232 


141 


10,241 


23,438 


Georgia 


• 338 


188 


69,956 


138,626 


South Carolina 


• 212, 


143 


51,889 


93,864 


Louisiana . 


. 247 


171 


28,481 


48,292 


Mississippi . 


• 193 


156 


68,023 


101,772 



342 B y. WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 





Average Size of Fanns. 


No, of Farms. 




(Acres.) 








1870. 


1880. 


1870. 


1880. 


North Carolina , 


. 212 


142 


93,565 


157,609 


Tennessee . 


. 166 


125 


118,241 


165,650 


Texas . 


. 301 


208 


61,125 


174,194 


Virginia 


. . 246 


167 


73,849 


118,517 



231-3 155-3 692,176 1,252,259 

How far this subdivision has been accompanied by more 
improved and precise methods of agriculture is hard to 
affirm. Certainly the system is bad enough now, and if 
there has been much progress, the original system must 
have been absurdly wasteful. 

To sum up the situation, the Southern planter as well as 
Southern communities in general have a great deal yet to 
learn as well as unlearn. The planter must unlearn 
his prodigal habits, must curb his convivial nature, prac- 
tise the plantation economies, and set bounds on his mis- 
guided hospitality; and communities appealing for our 
dollars must remember that Northern capital has still a 
chronic prejudice in favor of regions where "dying in the 
boots " is not so popular as passing away respectably in bed 
with the boots off. 



THE NEGRO OF THE MISSISSIPPI BENDS. 

THE two strips of land running from Helena, Arkan- 
sas, to Vicksburg, Mississippi, for several hundred 
miles down the Mississippi River, are known locally as 
" the Bends." More precisely speaking, the term belongs 
not only to the country included within the elbows of the 
great stream, but also to the lowland region reaching ten 
or twelve miles back from the banks. For the most part 
the Bends are a region of desolation made up of swamps, 
expanses of semi-tropical brushwood, bayous, and the 
system of horseshoe lakes, some of them twenty miles 
long, formed in old beds of the river. But intermingled 
with these forbidding features of the country are many 
rich and extensive cotton plantations peopled thickly with 
negroes. These negroes of the Bends are probably the 
purest types of their race to be found this side of Africa. 
The civilization of the whites, whom they largely out- 
number, and with whom they never associate, has scarcely 
touched them ; indeed, at only two points on the river, 
for a distance of three hundred miles, have they a chance 
to see a railroad or telegraph. Huddled together on their 
plantation settlements, rarely leaving home, and working 
out for themselves the simple problems of their lowly lot, 
they form a class whose life and habits reveal the lower 
343 



344 BY-WAYS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

phases of negro character most faithfully, most amusing- 
ly, and, in certain aspects, most sadly. 

While the plantation negro of the Bends in many traits 
and tastes is like the other freedmen of the South, in one 
point, indifference to dress, he diverges. The females ap- 
parently love finery, and dress their children often with 
some slight effort toward neatness ; but the adult male 
is, generally speaking, contemptuous of raiment. A coat 
is a coat for him so long as it will hold together in a chain 
of rags, and a hat is a hat whether it is a smashed stove- 
pipe or a ribbonless, tattered, faded pot-lid of a tile. The 
feeling of the plantation hand seems even to go farther 
than that, and to resolve itself into a positive affection for 
rags and patches. He seems a kind of apostle of tatters, 
whose chief aim in life is to discover how many variegated 
patches his pantaloons can take on without complete loss 
of identity, or how many rags can be produced to the 
square foot of integument. Something, of course, must 
be allowed for his rough work in the cotton-fields, and 
something more for the simple demands of fashion in the 
warm clime and lax civilization where he dwells. But 
outside of and above all that, he seems to cultivate a real 
aesthetic delight in his looped and windowed raggedness. 
His hat is always shapeless, saw-edged, and ventilated by 
many casual outlets, through which the dark wool pro- 
trudes ; his coat, if he has one, is either many sizes too 
large or a size too small, with immense baggy pockets ; 
his pantaloons, if not ragged, are covered with patches 



THE NEGRO OF THE MISSISSIPPI BENDS. 345 

representing every tint of the rainbow, and so many in 
number that the original garment serves only as a spectral 
framework on which the later accretions are hung ; and 
his boots, a size too large and of colossal proportions, 
have as many twists and angles as a big knot of wood, 
which, indeed, they much resemble. Mount this strange 
mortal, with his gleaming teeth and grotesque profile, on 
a gaunt, uncombed mule, and the combination of man 
and beast is simply indescribable. It makes one imagine 
some fanciful plantation Don Quixote, a knight-errant of 
the rag-bag. Talk of burlesquing on the minstrel stage 
the garb of one of these plantation negroes ! The sim- 
plest reality in the Bend region burlesques burlesque and 
eclipses the completest triumph of minstrel make-up. 

Speaking of the mule, by the way, suggests that brute's 
unique place in the life of the plantation, The animal on 
the cotton farms of the Bends is what an illiterate Yankee 
dame used to call a "bond of separation" between man 
and man. Half the bitter quarrels and jealousies between 
the negro race spring from some transaction about a mule. 
The white planter usually owns the animals, and supplies 
them to the colored laborer for the season. By a pleasant 
fiction the colored man is supposed to take good care of 
the mule, and after using it in tilling his plot of land, is 
allowed to ride it as though it were his own during his 
trips about the country. This long possession of the mule 
breeds in the negro a morbid sense of ownership. Even 
the white owner sometimes finds it hard to assert his title. 



34^ BV-PVAVS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

and to another negro the holder will rarely yield the ani- 
mal up even by the master's order. The owner must get 
the animal himself, and himself make the transfer, unless 
he would offer a deadly insult to the holder. Either his 
uncertain tenure or some more recondite reason makes the 
negro's mind peculiarly sensitive on this subject of the 
mule ; and many are the asperities among the black race 
of which this useful and not always inoffensive animal 
is the spring. 

One of these common " trubbles about de mool " came 
under my eye some time ago, and the story of it will 
serve to show another trait of negro character in the 
Bends. At Lakeport Landing, as well as at most of the 
small stopping-places on the Mississippi River, is a well- 
stocked store, which is a trading and supply station for 
the plantations near by. These stores in the evening, 
particularly as Christmas draws near, are centres where 
the plantation hands gather, and where one may study 
negro life in some of its oddest states. Entering the store 
on a recent afternoon, I found a mule trouble in full 
blast. The victim was an herculean negro with a brutish 
face, employed by Mr. Ford, a neighboring land-owner, 
who, after sending a negro for the animal, had, as usual in 
such cases, been forced to go and get it himself. The 
aggrieved holder had gone to the store, braced himself 
with a glass or two of cheap whiskey, then opened his 
harangue to a knot of dusky auditors. A fragment of his 
discourse may be appended as a fair specimen of the 



THE NEGRO OF THE MISSISSIPPI BENDS. 347 

ferocious but utterly harmless talk in which the negroes 
of the region love to indulge : 

" Now, you niggahs heah, just listen to me. Dere ain't 
one of yer gwine to get dat mool. I 'se been heah six 
months on Mister Ford's place, and just 'cause I 'se a new 
niggah don't yer think to disexpose [impose on] me. De 
man dat comes to my house for dat mool 's gwine to hab 
de life let out of him, shuah. I 'se got a big shooter to 
hom', and a razor beside. Just, now, don't yer forget hit, 
I lub dat mool, and I 'se gwine to keep him, shuah. My 
name 's Pete Smith. I was raised in Adams County, 
'Hio. Went to school dere seven year, and dere wa'n't 
no man dere for a hundred square mile could 'cite Shaks- 
pere as I could. Just you remember dat, and don't one 
ob yer come for dat mool ; for if yers does y 'ill be on de 
road to de grabeyard, shuah." 

All this time, it must be remembered, the mule had 
already been taken away, and had actually been trans- 
ferred to a second negro, as the orator well knew ; so that 
Mr. Pete Smith's murderous warnings were all contingent 
on an impossible event. This ludicrous aspect of his 
harangue, as well as his desire to impress his hearers with 
his liberal education and his familiarity with Shakspere, 
as qualifications for murder, both show that consuming 
love of sensation and brag which, while common to the 
colored race, prevails to an incredible degree among the 
negroes of the Bends. Only give a colored man some 
real or fancied wrong, with one auditor to talk to, and his 



348 BY-IVAYS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

bombast is limitless; while two of them in a dispute, 
though they always seem on the point of cutting each 
other's throats, almost never reach even a blow. They 
taunt, threaten, insult each other, slaughter metaphor and 
polysyllables mercilessly, and there the thing ends. At 
the store heretofore mentioned, some two nights before 
Christmas eve I saw at least forty negroes, men and 
women, most of them stimulated by whiskey, brawl- 
ing, yelling, threatening, and, seemingly, for two hours, 
ready to fight. But not a blow was struck, business went 
on as usual, the few whites took no notice of the racket, 
and every thing went off peaceably in a crowd which, had 
it been Irish or American, would certainly have seen 
bloodshed. A funny illustration of this same negro trait 
is related by a local planter, who once found two of his 
negroes quarrelling, with a shut door between them. 
They "dared" each other out and in for half an hour 
with blood-curdling threats and profanity. Suddenly a 
child opened the door — which had not been locked at all 
— leaving the foes face to face. They glared for a mo- 
ment, then, realizing that a crisis had come, each slunk 
away. Even the women constantly rule their young chil- 
dren with threats of the " I-'ll-cut-your-heart-out,-honey " 
order. To hear these negroes talk a stranger would 
imagine them the most gory-minded race on earth ; while 
the fact is, though most of the males carry pistols, vio- 
lence is vastly more uncommon than among people of 
the same degree anywhere at the North. Volubility is 
their safety-valve. 



THE NEGRO OF THE MISSISSIPPI BENDS. 349 

So, too, as part of his desire to appear a bigger man 
than he really is, the negro of the Bends hates to confess 
ignorance of any thing. You ask information of him on 
some simple point, and, if ignorant, his usual reply, in a 
low, apologetic tone, is, " Don't know, sah." Then in- 
stantly (in a louder tone), " Did know once, but just now 
I disremember." One reply I have had given to a ques- 
tion of the kind was : " Don't know, sah ; but think I 'd 
know if somebody was to tell me." Though the negroes 
love to be thought lettered, and, to impress their fellows, 
will con for hours a book in which they scarcely know 
a syllable, they, as a rule, are grossly illiterate. Probably 
not one in twenty has any practical knowledge of reading 
or writing. Many of them get in arithmetic no further 
than the simple record — as a memorandum — of a number 
which they usually put down exactly as spoken ; thus, 
200502 for two hundred and fifty-two. In consequence, 
some of their petty cotton accounts look as big as a 
national-debt statement. 

The curse of the plantation negro is his improvidence ; 
or, to speak more strictly, it is the curse of the credit 
system of which he is a part. The store-keeper, the planter, 
and the negro all have to run in the Bends on long 
credits contingent on the cotton crop. In the case of 
the negro, this is a double evil for him, because the 
credit system not only means excessive charges for his 
supplies, but quick exhaustion of them, as he imagines 
that " credit " signifies something indefinite, vague, and 



350 BY-IVAYS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

large, which will sanction extravagance. As a rule, work- 
ing his wife and a child or two in the cotton-picking 
season, he can earn not more than two hundred and 
fifty or three hundred dollars a year; and while his 
actual wants are few, his desires are boundless. Begin- 
ning his working year with a credit at the store of, 
say, a hundred dollars, he exhausts this, and perhaps a 
further credit, in a thousand improvident ways. He 
njakes reckless domestic purchases, drinks whiskey, while 
costly trash like sardines, canned oysters, raisins, and 
candy are crammed without limit down his craving 
maw. I have heard of a negro who, during one visit 
of an hour or two at the store, ate truck of this sort 
amounting to twelve dollars and a half, charged against 
his credit. In consequence of all this the negro's ac- 
count soon ends, and the close of the season finds him 
in debt ; then the planter and store-keeper have to carry 
him through the winter on short supplies, and almost on 
a pauper basis. He revels for five months in the year, 
and he and his family starve the other seven. Even 
when industrious and saving, he finds it hard to do 
any thing with his money. Of land titles he is suspi- 
cious, and therefore he rarely becomes a land-owner ; 
there are no savings-banks for him within four hundred 
miles, and if there were, the fate of the ill-starred Freed- 
men's Bank, which every southern negro seems to have 
heard of, would probably deter him from deposits ; of 
railroad or even government bonds he is as ignorant 



THE NEGRO OF THE MISSISSIPPI BENDS. 35 I 

as a Feejee. So he usually ends either by burying 
his money in the ground or trying with it to lease or 
work a larger plot of cotton, an enterprise in which, 
owing to his defective organizing faculty, he commonly 
fails. If the idea of the accumulation of money by 
interest in some safe investment like a government bond 
could once be grafted on the negro's mind, the benign 
results for the freedmen would be inestimable. But how 
to inculcate that idea on his defective intelligence is a 
problem that still awaits solution. 

Even the improvidence of the negro, like other planta- 
tion faults, has now and then its amusing side. A few 
years ago there visited the Bends an unprecedented cold 
snap, the snow falling to the depth of a foot and a half. 
The negroes are peculiarly susceptible to cold, but never 
keep a large stock of fuel, although the woods are close 
at their doors. The snow caught them with low wood- 
piles, which were quickly exhausted, and they had no 
sleds to drag more fuel with. Consequently, as a planter 
friend relates, nearly all the negro families of the region 
had to go to bed for two whole days to keep warm. 
Now and then a member of a bedded family would make 
a dash for a moment to seize something to eat, and then 
retire quickly to cover to make his meal. 

But the qualities of the Bend negro are by no means all 
negative. He is docile in his relations with the whites, 
rarely ill-tempered, and never nurses malice. The plant- 
ers always adjust the most bitter quarrels between two of 



352 BY-WAYS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

their hands simply by delay. Both may be deadly foes 
on Saturday night, and on Monday have utterly forgotten 
the feud and its cause. No planter, when appealed to, 
ever interferes in a negro quarrel. He counsels delay, or 
makes some temporizing promise, and in a day or two the 
whole difficulty lapses. The plantation negro, also, is uni- 
formly respectful and will do many small favors, expecting 
no reward, though, of course, he will accept it, if offered. 
Occasionally too he gives evidence of a humor with a de- 
cidedly original plantation smack* For instance, a planter 
' not far from Lakeport Landing some years ago won ill- 
repute among his hands for deceptive figures in settling 
cotton accounts with them. They composed this couplet 
to symbolize his one-sided mathematics : 

Ought 's an ought, carry nine, 
Dat makes all de cotton mine. 

A like couplet composed for a similar case runs as fol- 
lows : 

Ought 's for an ought ; one 's for a figure. 

One 's for de white man ; ought 's for de niggah. 

Few linguistic oddities are stranger than the use of 
some words adjectively by the Bend freedmen. They 
employ the expression " sure enough " much as the 
Yankee uses first-rate ; as, for instance, a " sure-enough 
mool " for a good animal of that species. The word 
" stogie," applied at the North only to coarse shoes or 
boots, is a negro adjective in the Bends meaning common 



THE NEGRO OF THE MISSISSIPPI BENDS. 353 

or poor ; while a " stogie," used as a noun, refers to a 
vile cigar sold for five cents. 

As field-hands, though slow, the negroes are generally- 
steady workers. As house servants they are dull and in- 
ferior, except that now and then a black woman can be 
taught mechanically to be a good cook. Physically the 
Bend negroes are often magnificent human animals — the 
men muscular, large-limbed, and big-chested ; the women 
robust and straight as a dart, owing, as is alleged, to their 
habit of carrying burdens on the head. Almost every 
large plantation has upon it two or three males who can 
each lift a bale of cotton weighing five hundred pounds; 
and usually one negro who can shoulder and carry it some 
distance — a feat peculiarly difficult with so awkward a 
weight. No reference to the physique of the Bend negro 
would be just without a tribute to the preternatural hard- 
ness of his cranium, the proverbial gift of his race. The 
often-described habit oi using the head as a battering-ram 
in warfare prevails very commonly, and one dusky fighter 
has the reputation of invariably conquering his antagonist 
if he can once clench him and hold him at " butting " dis- 
tance. I once saw the mate of a river steamer, a muscular 
fellow, wielding a thick hickory cane, strike with all his 
force a negro deck-hand fairly on the skull. The blow was 
terrific. It cut the negro's felt hat, opened the skin until 
the blood flowed, and made a sound which could have 
been heard a quarter of a mile away. No white man 
could ever have received the blow and survived. But the 



354 £y-JVAYs OF nature and life. 

negro, though he staggered, gave it no attention, nor even 
raised his hand to his head. My planter friend tells also 
of an incident in his gin-house, where a negro, hurrying 
with a sack of cotton on his shoulder, struck a beam with 
his head. The blow was like the stroke of a sledge-ham- 
mer, and the whole building quivered. " That must have 
hurt your head, Jim," said my friend, pityingly. " No, 
sah," was the reply. " Did n't hurt my head a bit, but 
sprained my neck drefHy." 

Take him all in all, the Bend negro is not a bad fellow. 
The effect of him, as a whole, inconsistent as the state- 
ment may souud, is not half so bad as when we analyze his 
traits separately. His failings, somehow, seem to offset 
each other, and over them all his good nature and amus- 
ing ways throw a halo of fun. Even his deeper faults, 
some of which have not been recited in this chapter, are 
those for which his degrading ignorance is chiefly respon- 
sible, while that ignorance, in turn, must be charged to 
the blight of slavery, in whose near shadows he is still 
dwelling. 



NEGRO RITES AND WORSHIP. 

AT no point does the Bend negro's love of ostentation 
reveal itself more plainly then in his rites and 
ceremonies. Religion, marriage, and more secular ob- 
servances would be nothing comparatively to him unless 
attended with some form of emotional excitement ; and 
excitement cannot be generated in his peculiar nature by 
any thing that is subdued and undemonstrative. Among 
the negroes of the Bends there are institutions called 
churches, there is -a rite called marriage, there is a cere- 
mony after death called a funeral. I have used in the 
foregoing sentence terms which have a familiar meaning 
when employed by the whites, but they become fantastic 
when one finds what they signify among the Bend negroes. 
A funeral among the Bend negroes has by no means 
the solemn significance of mortuary observance among 
the whites. No doubt some genuine grief goes with it. 
But the prevailing feeling of the adult members of a 
bereaved negro family is a kind of mournful exultation, a 
sort of " luxury of grief," which comes from being for a 
few hours the central actors at a ceremony in which a 
whole community takes part. That community in turn 
attends a funeral less ostensibly from any profound sorrow 
for the dead than to minister to its morbid passion for 

355 



356 BV-fVAVS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

display, and to indulge the emotions which song, preach- 
ing, and shouts always arouse in the colored race. The 
corpse, as decently laid out as the narrow means of the 
family will permit, is placed in its rough coffin, which 
is lifted into a wagon drawn by two mules. It is the tradi- 
tional and always exacted privilege of the nearest of kin 
to sit on the coffin as it goes to the grave. Over the 
wagon, and often in the procession, are borne small flags 
of diverse colors, each with its meaning. A black flag 
indicates the bad character of the dead, or at least, a 
rational doubt as to his moral traits and prospects of 
posthumous happiness ; a white flag symbolizes his good 
quahties ; while a black banner, crossed with white marks, 
is the church emblem to typify his Christian fellowship. 
Then the long procession, made up of dusky families in 
wagons and on foot, wends its way to the grave, singing, 
shouting, and wailing. At the grave the service is short, 
while the chief mourners, crowding around the shallow 
pit, throw their hands wildly in air, shout, and finally 
fall down, tearing the earth in their seeming paroxysms of 
woe. The whites of the Bends, owing to the frequent 
overflows of the Mississippi, keep their dead above ground 
in small vaults of brickwork, usually stuccoed, and erected 
somewhere near the planter's home. But it is significant 
of the ephemeral affection of the negroes for their lost 
that they usually bury them in low bottoms, where a single 
spring flood washes away all traces of the grave. During 
two visits to the Bends, one of them somewhat prolonged, 
the writer has never yet seen a negro graveyard. 



NEGRO RITES AND WORSHIP. 357 

The immediate rites following death count, however, as 
nothing in the negro conception of mortuary consequence. 
The grand rite is the "funeral sermon," coming some- 
times years after the burial. This funeral sermon has a 
special dignity as well as a cost which no negro family can 
afford to treat lightly; for, to be carried out in fitting 
style, several preachers are expected to ofificiate, who are 
to be entertained at a good dinner with the rare luxury of 
a bottle of wine, and finally are to be paid for their tributes 
to the dead. The funeral sermon, therefore, is postponed 
until the money can be saved up, and usually is delivered 
in August, the intermediate month between the close of 
cotton cultivation and the beginning of cotton-picking, a 
period to which the liegro looks forward as a school-boy 
does to vacation. This is also in negso parlance tlie sea- 
son of " distracted [protracted] meetings," when not only 
are the all-night funeral discourses preached, but other 
services of a revival nature held, lasting often until sun- 
rise. When the improvident habits of the negro are con- 
sidered, it need scarcely be said that the funeral sermon 
is often not delivered at all ; more commonly, however, 
it is delayed from six months to two years, and I have 
heard of one case where ten years elapsed between the 
burial and this final grotesque rite. Nevertheless, the be- 
reaved family always long for the occasion which will 
once again make them conspicuous; and this vanity, 
coupled with the long delay, sometimes leads to curious 
sequels. I have heard of a stricken husband who had the 



358 BY-WAYS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

funeral sermon of his first wife preached one week before 
he wedded his second. More ludicrous still was the re- 
cent case of a negro husband who insisted on the funeral 
sermon for his first wife some weeks after taking another 
partner. At first this sermon did not come off at the ap- 
pointed time, and his white employer, meeting the hus- 
band, asked the reason of the delay. " De fac is," said 
the late widower, " my second wife has disobjected to dat 
funeral sermon. But nex' Sunday she 's gwine off to visit 
some 'lations, and dat sermon 's gwine to come off shuah," 
and come off it did. 

A wedding among the Bend negroes has not often been 
seen by the whites, and details of the rite are meagre. 
Up to some years after the war both the ceremony and 
the certificate were dispensed with altogether, but of late 
both are usually insisted on. Each pastor has now a form 
and ceremonial of his own, some of which are most ex- 
traordinary mixtures of religious and secular nonsense. A 
lady who recently attended the wedding of a former 
nurse of her family, gives a ludicrous description of the 
rite. The bride was forty-five years old ; the groom 
twenty years her junior. The oflficiating Baptist elder, 
"Uncle Dick," old, blind, and now on the retired list, 
" spread himself " to the utmost on this exceptional and 
for him almost final occasion. He began with the Epis- 
copal service, gradually drifting into Baptist and Meth- 
odist forms, punctuated with decidedly original remarks 
of his own, and ending with a homily an hour long to the 



NEGRO RITES AND WORSHIP. 359 

newly wedded couple. " Now," he began [pointing to the 
bride], "you s M., and you [to the groom] is N.; and M., 
be mighty careful dat you don't anser for M.; and you, 
N., be sartin yer don't speak for M., for we wants dis heah 
wedding done up right and squar', sure 'nough." Then 
in thundering tones Uncle Dick proclaimed the age of the 
bride as well as of the groom, continuing: " Seems to me 
dar 's most too much of a 'crepuncy [discrepancy] of age 
heah. Gwine to be trubble after dis wedding, shuah, if yer 
both or yer don't look out mighty sharp." In his after- 
homily Uncle Dick cited by name several local cases of 
notorious infidelity to the marriage relation as awful ex- 
amples for the pair to shun. A number of the sinners 
named were present, one of whom was the brother of 
the groom. 

At these weddings it is the highest breach of colored 
etiquette for any one to speak to either bride or groom 
before the service begins. 

But it is in the more purely religious gatherings and in 
preaching that the Bend negro revels. Judged outwardly, 
the negro is the most religious of mankind. His meetings 
take place two or three times a week, besides Sundays, 
and often last all night. So exhausting are they, in fact, 
that a "revival" season is dreaded by the planters, as it 
so seriously impairs the work of their hands in the field. 
Along with every large plantation for hundreds of miles 
through the Bend region goes the inevitable negro 
church. Let us take one near the Lakeport landing as a 



360 B y- WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

specimen structure: It is of rough, barn-like exterior, 
whitewashed, and with seating capacity for perhaps a 
hundred auditors. Within are coarse benches, cobwebbed 
board walls, a long desk and platform made of unfinished 
lumber, a dingy kerosene chandelier with one or two 
lights, and behind the so-called pulpit a line of tawdry 
colored prints pasted on the boards depicting scriptural 
themes like Moses and the burning bush, the ark on 
Ararat, and Daniel with the lions. The men sit on one 
side, the women on the other, with a huge stove as a 
dividing mark between. One of the thick loose boards 
forming a bench projects far beyond its proper equilibrium 
at one end. This particular board is a huge delight for 
the youngsters of the congregation, who watch it as they 
would a rabbit trap ; for every now and then some big 
negro incautiously sits down on the overhanging extrem- 
ity, the other end rises high, then descends with a loud 
slam when the victim has been dropped off. It seems 
never to have occurred to the sexton to saw off the super- 
fluous extremity, or, more likely, he lets it stay because it 
gives him a chance for officious rebuke of the giggling 
youngsters — a perquisite of ofBce that only a negro would 
think of. The edifice, moreover, has a bell, which most 
of its fellows lack ; and in one case I have seen as a sub- 
stitute a rusty buzz-saw hung by a rope, and, when struck 
by a stone, giving a ludicrous cracked note to summon 
the worshippers together. 

One may well despair by any verbal description to pic- 



NEGRO RITES AND WORSHIP. 36 1 

ture realistically even the commonest absurdities of negro 
worship in the Bends. The services usually open with a 
long, monotonous hymn, chanted through perhaps twenty 
stanzas. A brief address from one of the deacons follows, 
in which he gives a summary of the services that are to 
come, and exhorts his auditors to behave themselves. 
Then come from other deacons several wild and incoher- 
ent prayers, accompanied by the swaying sisters with a 
low hymn, after the fashion of the slow music of the 
theatrical stage. Sometimes one of the sisters prays, and 
recently I heard one of them, in the excitement of her ap- 
peal, say : " O Lordy, I kno' dat Daniel took de fast ex- 
press for heaven ; I prays yer send down dat train for me 
too, and gib me a free ticket." It is noteworthy, by the 
way, that much of the religious imagery of the blacks 
along the river is taken from railroads, and some of its 
applications are very amusing. This railroad imagery is, 
perhaps, due to the remoteness of the railroad and the 
deep impression made on the negro fancy when, once or 
twice in a lifetime, the locomotive and its train are 
seen. 

Next comes the sermon. The elder almost always 
opens in an apologetic tone, deprecating his own physical 
condition. He is either " drefful hoarse from a good deal 
of jpreachin V' or " a mighty bad cold got right into de 
lung ; " a " mool has kicked him," or some other ailment 
has made him feel so badly that his auditors " mus'n't 
'spect much dis time." Then he chooses his text, usu- 



362 B Y- WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

ally from Job or from " de Book of de Rebelations," the 
fiery metaphor of which is an inexhaustible mine for the 
negro exhorters. Usually the sermon consists of a review 
of some of the metaphorical pictures of the Scripture, 
which the preacher describes himself as seeing. As the 
frenzy grows on him he becomes louder in utterance 
and more demonstrative in movement. He prances back 
and forth from edge to edge of the platform, now with 
vibrating hands in air, now bending forward or leaping as 
high as he can toward the roof to express his soaring ex- 
altation. Perspiration pours in streams down his dusky 
skin. At the end of every sentence he utters a loud, in- 
describable noise, halfway between a snort and a groan, or 
drops his voice into a sort of parenthetical chant, made 
up of set phrases like " O what a sight ! " ; or he gives a 
tremendous snort, followed by a hissing expectoration. 
When I first saw this amazing expectoration I supposed 
it due to a genuine cold ; but since then I have discovered 
that it is a studied embellishment of negro oratory in the 
Bends. All through the sermon the preacher is stimulated 
by the chants of the sisters, the shouts of the brethren, 
and a swaying, rhythmical movement which swings the 
whole congregation in unison. Particularly if the elder 
describes some figurative combat of his own with Satan, 
the shouts of " Gib it to him ! " " Shoot him down ! " and 
once " Cut him wid a big razor ! " urge on the preacher to 
combat and almost lift the roof. His sermon usually 
lasts a full hour, with a short interval about the middle of 



NEGRO RITES AND WORSHIP. 363 

the discourse for rest, during which the congregation 
chant a hymn. Instead of closing with a peroration the 
sermon is finished off with a sort of anti-cHmax, the 
preacher's voice sinking suddenly from a yell to a few col- 
loquial words, thanking his congregation for their atten- 
tion and hoping his words will " beneficiate " them. 
Words must fail utterly to depict the absurd effect of this 
closing apology, or of the combination of shouts, spitting, 
chants, and pastoral contortions which lend their peculiar 
emphasis to one of these negro discourses. 

The exegesis of the Scripture by some of the black 
pastors will be new to the most advanced theologians. A 
sermon, for instance, of much local celebrity among the 
dusky race is preached by one of the Bend elders, on 
" de horse a pawin' in de valley," and opens somewhat as 
follows : " Dis horse of the Scriptur', breddering, I figurate 
to be de oster [ostrich]. Dis oster laid three egg in de des- 
ert, cubbered dem in de san' for de sun ob glory to hatch 
out, den went off to hid 'hind a stone. Dese egg, bredder- 
ing, was de seeds of de church, least I figurate dey was. 
But five Arabs who was de persecutors of de church 
wanted to smash dem &gg. So dey try to seek dem out, 
and drove de poor oster ten mile through de valley of 
Jehosaphat. Dey corner dat poor oster at de head of de val- 
ley, and think they hab him shuah, but suddenly de oster 
rose high in de mid air, flap him wing, and laughed dose 
wicked Arabs to scorn. De &gg dey den hatch out, and so, 
breddering, as I figurate it, was de origen of de Church." 



364 B V- IVA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

The description by the pastor of the " oster's " chase 
through the valley — the preacher all the while flapping 
his arms rooster fashion — was an immense sensation in 
its way. The reader will, no doubt, perceive that the 
three eggs to the distorted negro fancy symbolized the 
Trinity. 

Some years ago, though not in a plantation church, I 
heard from one of these colored elders a most extraor- 
dinary picture of the final resurrection. This preacher — 
who, if I may use the paradox, was a black luminary 
among the colored clergy — was an extraordinary fellow 
physically. He was shaped much like a hogshead of 
molasses, and looked as if some one had put a huge quill 
in him and blown him up. He wore immense double- 
green goggles, two in front of his eyes, and another set 
backing on his temples — a common device of the negro 
preachers to impress their congregation with their wis- 
dom. Once during his discourse a black boy laughed. 
The preacher glared at him and said : "Young man, you 's 
a-laughin' to your own damnation. De Lord '11 shake yer 
yet like ebrything." His description of the mystery of 
the resurrection ran as follows : " Breddering, when yer 
dies, yer head, perhaps, '11 be in Alabama, yer body in 
Virginia, and yer leg in Carolina. But when dat great 
day comes, an' Gabriel blows de big horn, de head *li go 
up and de leg '11 go up, and the head '11 meet de leg and 
say, * Where yer gwine to, leg ? ' And the leg will yell, 
in de voice of a trumpet, * Gwine to join de body.' " A 



NEGRO RITES AND WORSHIP. 365 

white lady who used to attend the services of this same 
preacher tells me that he once discoursed as follows : 
" Breddering, dose white folks laughin' ober dere on de 
back seats, thinks just 'cause dey 's got money an' fine 
clothes dat dey 's de sheep of de Scripture, while we poor 
black folks is the goats. But dat ain't so. We 's de sheep, 
shuah, and de Lord has set his sign on us for a token ; for 
don't yer see de wool on our heads? " 

A formula for blessing food at table, which is attributed 
to a local elder, is worth quoting. This elder is a tall, 
gaunt personage who, rising over the board and drooping 
his claw-like fingers, looks more like a hawk about to 
swoop on its prey than an invoker of divine grace. His 
form of blessing runs thus : " O Lordy ! what we has here 
'pon de convivial board, make us mighty thankful fer ; and 
as to what we haint got, let us hope we 'd be miserribul 
if we had it." 

The colloquial and diminutive use of the word 
"Lordy" for the name of the Deity is a token of the 
Southern negro's constant and familiar reference to his 
Maker in every relation of daily life. Sometimes it leads 
to most humorous contrasts. They tell at Charleston, 
South Carolina, of a conversation overheard between two 
negroes, one of whom was a follower and the other an op- 
ponent of Robert Small, who at the time of the story was 
a candi.J!ate for some political office in the State. Said the 
adherent : " A mighty able man Mr. Small is, I tell yer ; 
a mighty fine man, a mighty big man." " Yes," answered 



366 B Y- WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

the Other, "but not so big as God, though." "Well," 
answered the candidate's friend, " Mr. Small 's young 
yet." 

A better instance that hits off the same religious emo- 
tion of the negro, under fear, is of uncertain locality, but 
is so exquisite in its delineation of the freedman's tem- 
perament that the story vouches for its own truth. A 
balloon with two aeronauts in the car had ascended from 
some Southern city. It came down in a cotton field 
where a dozen negro hands were at work. One of the 
balloonists stayed to hold the air-ship, while his mate ran 
toward the negroes for help. The black group had been 
standing with dilated eyes and trembling knees, watching 
the coming of what they thought a celestial apparition. 
The instant they saw what they took for a heavenly mes- 
senger actually on his way to bespeak them, with a wild 
yell of fear they dashed for the woods. The stranger fol- 
lowed closely, pouring out volumes of profanity, but all 
the fugitives escaped except one, who was lame. This 
poor fellow was fairly agonized with terror. He heard 
the apparition gaining. When it was close at his heels he 
turned and, to propitiate the Being, fell on his knees, 
looked appealingly up in the pursuer's face, and with 
clasped hands cried, " O Massa Jesus ! How 's yer Pa ? " 

The negroes have a set of myths, some of which, in 
their way, rival, and not a little resemble, those of 
antiquity. One of them, which is told in many parts of 
the South as well as along the river, is implicitly believed 



NEGRO RITES AND WORSHIP. 367 

by some of the more credulous blacks. Here it is as it 
comes from the lips of one of them : "Years and years 
ago dere was n't but two nashuns on de earth, and both 
of dem was black. One nashun de Lord loved eber so 
much. Dis nashun he took to de banks of de blessed 
ribber and say, 'Jump in.' But dey did n't like de water, 
so they jump and goes ober de ribber on de front ob der 
ban's and de sole of de foot. Dat nashun is now de 
black one. But de other nashun, dey jump in all ober, 
and become all white. Den de Lord show both nashuns 
two chests, one big chest, and one a little feller. Den de 
black race choose de big chest and open it, and inside 
was a hoe and an axe and a spade. But de white race 
choose de little chest and open it, and inside was nothin' 
but a pen and some paper." 

Most of the members of the negro churches in the 
Bend region believe that they have a monopoly of salva- 
tion, and that the whites and blacks outside of the church 
pale are irretrievably lost. By " the Church " they mean 
the Baptist denomination, though, except in the practice 
of immersion, I can detect no likeness to the creed or 
polity of that denomination. Up to a short time after 
the war almost all the negroes of the Bends called them- 
selves Methodists. Now the so-called Baptists are the 
largely predominating sect. The writer asked one of the 
local elders recently the reason of the change. He re- 
plied : " De fac' is, boss, I don' know for certain about 
de doctrine of de thing. But we thinks just dis : When 



368 B y- WA Ys OF na ture and life. 

we was in de Methodis' Church we might sin and be shot 
out of de church mighty quick. But once we 's in de 
Baptis' Church we may sin and get a little punishment ; 
still we 's in de church shuah, and can't be quite lost, not 
nohow." The whites tell two stories relating to baptism, 
one of which illustrates the spirit in which some of the 
neophytes take the rite — a story which, however, I have 
heard elsewhere. The elder was about to dip a stout 
negress, when a sister on the river-bank cried out : 
" Don't baptize dat woman ; she stole a goose from me 
last night." "And did you steal a goose and den come 
heah so soon to be baptized ? " asked the elder, reproach- 
fully. "Yes," was the answer, "I did steal dat goose, 
elder ; but does yer think I 's agoin' to let one old goose 
Stan* 'tween me an' de Lord ? " In another better 
authenticated local instance, the neophyte, as she rose 
from the muddy Mississippi water, cried out : " Oh, glory ! 
I seed Jesus down dar." "Now, don't you be a sure 
enough fool," answered a sister on the bank. " 'T wa'n't 
notin' but a cooter" [mud-turtle]. 

There is one sad side to negro religion as manifested in 
the Bends. The universal testimony of the planters is 
that it demoralizes the negro far more than it leads him 
into the path of virtue. Some morality is preached, but 
the bulk of the sermonizing consists of distorted imagery, 
exciting for the moment, but more hurtful than healthful 
to ignorant minds; while the Church is too often used 
as a cloak for most abominable licentiousness. After 



NEGRO RITES AND WORSHIP. 369 

seeing the flaws of negro worship in the Bends, one can 
accept readily the story of the church deacon who once 
bought strong liquor instead of the sacramental wine, 
" coz he found dat most of de ladies of de congregation 
preferred gin " ; and there is a well-confirmed report of a 
Southern negro pastor who after communion peddled out 
what was left of the wine at five cents a glass. In the 
Bends the colored preacher is almost invariably a bad 
worker in the fields and a worse moralist. 



NEGRO SONGS AND HYMNS. 

HALF the joy in life of the negro of the Mississippi 
Bends is derived from vocal melody; and no 
trait of his odd and inconsistent character is stranger than 
this. At other points vile and almost semi-barbarous, in 
the breadth and intensity of his musical feeling he rivals 
the most civilized of nations. Music enters into every 
fibre of his being — into his daily toil, his religion, his 
passions, his loves. But while many of his songs are secu- 
lar or even vicious, by far the larger part are those that 
pertain to worship. It may be said, indeed, that almost 
all his religion is a service of song. The preacher intones 
not a little of his sermon ; the congregation accompany 
with a low melody during fully one half the preacher's 
discourse ; the prayers are often delivered to slow, monoto- 
nous music by female voices, and actual intervals of the 
service are unknown, for the intervals are filled by hymns, 
some of them so long that they give one a decided respect 
for the negro's powers of memory. 

While some of the hymns sung in the churches of the 
Bends are taken directly from the old hymn-books of the 
Baptist and Methodist churches, and some also from the 
later compositions which Moody and Sankey have popu- 
larized, by far the most melodious and interesting ones 
370 



NEGRO SONGS AND HYMNS. 371 

have originated with the negroes themselves. Where the 
tunes have come from is a mystery. Perhaps they began 
years ago as compositions of more cultivated minds and, 
by addition or subtraction of notes, have lost all their 
primitive sounds. This theory, at any rate, accounts for 
the words ; for often a negro hymn opens with a stanza or 
two which would not have discredited Watts. Then, as it 
proceeds, it drops into the grotesque metaphors, the dia- 
lectical quaintness, and droll phrasing which prove it of 
plantation origin. As these later stanzas have been 
grafted one by one on the early structure of the hymn, 
the original lines— which appeal less strongly to negro 
feeling than those of his own composition — have been 
dropped, until the whole hymn has been reconstructed / 
into one of a pure negro quality. There is, however, still 
another set of hymns, the words of which the plantation 
negro himself composed entirely at the beginning. They 
are usually short-metred idiomatic descriptions of familiar 
Bible incidents, some of them of incredible length, and 
bristling with anachronisms. The blacks call this class of 
hymns " figurated " from the Bible; and I have heard one'^ 
which was descriptive of the battle of Christian and 
Apollyon, and consequently "figurated" from Bunyan. 
No word, by the way, is a sweeter morsel on the negro^ 
tongue than this original verb, to " figurate." It has the 
rotund and sonorous quality which the negro loves, and 
is used in a dozen senses, some of them quite contradictory 
of the others. 



3/2 BY-fVAVS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

How absurdly some of these *'figurated" hymns deal 
with the Scriptural record a single specimen stanza from 
a very common negro composition of the Bends will 
illustrate : 

In de days of de great tribulajA«w, 
On a big desert island de Philistines put John, 
But de ravens dey feed him till de dawn come roun', 
Den he gib a a big jump and flew up from de groun'. 
O come down, come down, John ! 

If any thing can add to the anachronisms and kindred 
absurdities of the stanza, it will be the explanation that 
the John referred to is supposed by the negroes to be 
John the Baptist. 

In every negro church there are two or three male or 
female singers whose voices give them place as leaders. 
They are proud of this prominence, and devote many of 
their hours to learning the words and tunes. Their mem- 
ories as to both are prodigious, and it is a striking proof 
of the hold that song has upon them that often only with 
the utmost difficulty have I been able to get the words 
from them without singing. " Can sing de hymn right off 
to yer, boss," said one to me recently, " but fin* it mighty 
hard to 'cite de words widout de tune." The precision 
in time of a negro congregation is absolutely marvellous 
for so untrained a body. Every note is hit with exquisite 
accuracy, and in their antiphonal hymns, when the men 
sing a line and the women respond, the intervals are per- 
fect. Though their tunes are very simple, and range 
through but a few notes, the wonderful flexibility of some 



NEGRO SONGS AND HYMNS. 373 

of their voices produces almost the result on the ear of 
scientific singing ; and no trained white choir can begin to 
produce the general effect of these negro hymns rendered 
by the men and women who have sung them from child- 
hood. The rich voices of the famous Jubilee Singers 
are blended among the Bend congregations with two 
peculiar tones which I have never heard elsewhere — one 
a kind of nasal elevation of the voice as the male singer 
utters a most singular " rasp " through his nostril, the 
other a female note pitched so high that it is more like 
steel scratching a slate than a human voice. 

Very few of these hymns ever deal with any thing but 
imagery and Scriptural pictures ; but now and then is 
found one with a moral tone, like the following, aimed at 
the religious backslider : 



Some join de church to put on pretents, 

Until de day of grace is spent ; 

Sunday come its Christian grace, 

Monday come dey lose der faith. 

De debbil gets dem, dey roll up de sleeve, 

Der religion comes out and 'gin to leave, 

Ole man Adam has nebber been out, 

When guilt condemns dem dey git up and out. 



Still another class of hymns blends the secular and 
religious sentiment. A trifling and utterly nonsensical 
set of lines is closed with some religious exclamation 
which appears to be the only sanction for the use of the 
queer medley in worship : 



n 



r 



374 BV-PFAVS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

Big ole black man hidin' 'hind de log, 
Finger on de trigger, eye upon de hog. 
\^ Shiloh ! Shiloh ! 

A better illustration is the following : 

Good-bye, eberybody ; 
I don't care what yer call me ; 
Yer may call me long-tongue liar, 
But I 's going to Zion. Halleloo ! 

The proclivity of the negro for railroad metaphor, here- 
tofore spoken of, is disclosed also in their hymns : 

There is a road which Christ hab made. 
With heavenly trestles the rails is laid ; 
I 'm goin' on dat line. Halleloo ! 

Some of these hymns are spun out to enormous length, 
particularly those set to a popular local melody. I have 
often heard a single hymn sung rapidly without repetition 
of a stanza for half an hour. One composition has a stanza 
for each letter of the alphabet : 

B for Babylon, dat wicked place. 
She was 'stroyed in forty days. 



And SO, on through all the letters of the alphabet. 

Of course, John the Baptist is a prominent subject in 
negro hymnology ; and one religious song with a grand, 
swinging melody stands perhaps first in merit and popu- 
larity as well as length. It is called the ** John de Baptis' 
Song," and a few stanzas well deserve a place here : 



NEGRO SONGS AND HYMNS. 



375 




1. Oh, his name was John de Bap-tis, And out of de wa-ter he sprung, 



6 



^3^ 



5=g 



When Je - sua come to tell him, To lead his peo - pie home. 



Den run a-long on to Je - sus, Den run a - long on to God ; 



feg^E^g^^ 



^ 



Den run a-long on to Je - sus, And get your sure re-ward. 

Some say dis John de Baptis' 

Was nuffin* but a Jew ; 
But de Holy Bible tells us 
Dat John was a preacher too. 

Chorus — Den run along on to Jesus, 

Den run along on to God ; 
Den run along on to Jesus, 
And git your shuah reward. 
I 'se waitin' all de night long — 

I 'se waitin' all de day — 
I 'se waitin' all de night long 
To hear one sinner pray. 
Chorus — 
Den, please, God, save our country, 

Our church and pastor too. 
Our elders, and our deacons. 
And all our Baptis' crew. 
Chorus — 
Moses and the prophets of the Old Testament are also 
favorite characters : 



376 BY-WAYS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

O Moses ! Moses ! 

Don't git lost ; 
Stretch out yer rod. 

And come across. 
Daniel ! Daniel ! 

Git out de fire, 
Kill dem lions, 

And go up higher. 

One of the most melodious of the negro songs is made 
doubly effective by responsive singing, the women chant- 
ing the " O Lord ! Yes," and the males rendering the 
alternate lines, while both sexes join in the chorus: 

As I was a walkin' out one day, 

O Lord ! Yes. 
I saw dem grapes a hangin' high, 

O Lord ! Yes. 
I plucked dem grapes and sucked de juice, 

O Lord ! Yes. 
De juice was sweet as honey meat, 

O Lord ! Yes. 

Chorus. — See me here, believe me ; see me here ; 
All 'round de altar, see me here, 
Jew kill my Sabiour 
One day 'fore I know ; 
Bury him in sepulcree. 
One day 'fore I know. 

A hymn that glows throughout with fervid negro 
imagery opens : 

When de star from de elemunts is fallin'. 
And de sun and de moon dip in blood, 

Sinnah ! sinnah ! where will ye stan' ? 
But I sees my Jesus comin', 
Wid a rainbow on his shoulder. 

According to white authority in the Bends, the relig- 
ious song first published years ago by Mr. Harris, 



NEGRO SONGS AND HYMNS. ^'J'J 

(the " Uncle Remus " of the Atlanta Constitution^ and 
entitled "Uncle Remus' Revival Hymn," is largely- 
derived from actual lines sung by the negroes and 
cleverly united. It differs from all the other negro 
hymns I have heard in having variations of the chorus. 
As, perhaps, the best negro hymn ever printed, two or 
three of its characteristic stanzas, given roughly from 
memory, may fitly close these selections : 

Oh ! -whar will ye be when de great day comes, 

Wid de tootin' of de trumpets an' de rollin' of de drams ? 

Full many a poor sinnah will be cotched out late 

An' fin' no latch to de golden gate. 



Den come along, sinnah, if yer coxnin' ; 
Ole Satan is loose and a bummin' ; 
Sin is sharp as a bamboo brier ; 
O Lord, fetch de mourners up higher. 

Oh ! de song of salvation is a mighty sweet song, 
An' de paradise wind blow swift and blow strong. 
An' Abram's buzzom, 't is deep an' 't is wide, 
An* right dere 's de spot dat de darkey ought to hide. 



Den don't be a stoppin' an' a lookin', 
If yer fool with ole Satan ye '11 get took in. 
Ye '11 hang o'er de brink and get shook in, 
So don't be a stoppin' an' a lookin'. 

Hymn-books are, of course, dispensed with by a congre- 
gation of whom not one in twenty can read; and, if 
the hymn is unfamiliar, the officiating elder or his assist- 
ant intones two lines at a time, and the hymn is thus 
sung by sections. The deacons and sub-deacons, how- 



37^ By.lVAYS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

ever, almost always con the hymn-books assiduously, turn- 
ing the leaves in rapid succession ; but the white employer 
of these deacons who make such a show of erudition 
will tell you that scarcely one of them can read a word. 

The planter who has any piece of emergency work 
on hand, like a long, quick pull in a boat or the repair of a 
levee, always resorts to the device of getting his men to 
start some rhythmic plantation melody; and a superin- 
tendent of some Southern mining works — involving labor 
peculiarly hard for negroes — has told me that his hands 
once " struck " summarily, when for some reason he was 
L_forced to stop their singing. One morning he chanced to 
overhear one of his men, who had just begun his day's 
work, crooning half unconsciously an extemporized song, 
as is often the Southern negro's wont. The words 
ran substantially as follows : 

O massa, how tired I be. 

Working in de mine all day. 

Worn out and done busted, 

Nothing left of dis poor niggah ! 

See a man comin' over de hill. 

He '11 take my pick, shuah, and let dis niggah go. 

The singer was a stalwart laborer, one of the superin- 
tendent's most efficient men, and had been at work per- 
haps five minutes. All through his day's work he re- 
peated the same song, slightly altering the words. 

Singing, far more than preaching, produces that phe- 
nomenon of real or simulated hysteria to which in their 
religious frenzy the negroes — particularly the females — 



NEGRO SONGS AND HYMNS. 3/9 

are subject. The symptoms of that mysterious condition, 
with its convulsions, its groans, and its wild struggles, sub- 
siding often into seeming unconsciousness, almost always 
follow some prolonged hymn during a period of the so- 
called "distracted " (protracted) meetings, when the emo- 
tions of the race are at white heat. In the Bends, how- 
ever, nearly every religious service is attended with one 
or more cases of the hysteria. Both whites and blacks in 
the Bends use the term "shouting " to describe this phe- 
nomenon, though, so far as I have known, the victims in 
the Bend churches never really shout. The whites say 
that the term originated years ago, when the negroes in 
their contortions really shouted, but that the yells re- 
duced the meetings to a bedlam too uproarious for even 
negro taste, and that by orders of the church officers all 
loud outcry has been suppressed, though the old title 
is retained to describe the strange convulsion. If this is 
so, it argues that the condition is one of fictitious hysteria 
put on for show. But some cases that I have seen personally 
go far to indicate that sometimes the hysteria is genuine. 
In one instance, when a protracted "watch-meeting" on 
the last night of the year was in progress, I saw a negress 
lean forward upon a rail of a seat, holding it fast with 
both hands. Then she began a series of convulsive leaps, 
rising high upward and jerking herself down again with a 
movement so swift that she actually seemed a mere 
shadow in the air. This awful energy, which the strongest 
man in his natural condition could not have imitated for 



380 BV-IVAYS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

more than two or three minutes, this negress kept up for 
at least twenty minutes, falling back at last, with a dull 
" thud," on her head. It seems hard to reconcile this 
and many like cases with any thing but a real morbid ec- 
stacy generated by nervous emotion. It is a fact also of 
some interest that the term shouting in some parts of the 
South is used only for a peculiar dance in which the males 
and females, standing back to back in two separate hnes, 
sing, dance, scream, and go through some original negro 
calisthenics. In other regions of the South, moreover, 
there are pens filled with straw, attached to negro 
churches, in which the shouters are summarily dumped 
and left for an hour or two, in company, often, with some 
refractory negro wife whose husband believes the company 
of the shouters will bring her to a " religious 'speriunce." 
A peculiar set of negroes along the Mississippi, who 
rely partly on their songs of incantation for mercenary- 
trickery, are the " lizard " doctors. Almost every negro 
community has one or more of these quacks. A negro is 
seized with some acute disease, and, particularly if he is 
bilious, is very apt to imagine that a lizard is making 
havoc with his vitals. So the lizard doctor is summoned. 
He makes an examination, sings one or two " charm " 
songs addressed to the lizard, then gives the patient some 
simple emetic. After the medicine has operated, the fel- 
low juggles a live lizard t)ut of his sleeve and shows it 
triumphantly to the sufferer, whose natural recovery is 
often surprisingly hastened by the effect on his imagina- 



NEGRO SONGS AND HYMNS. 38 1 

tion. A higher grade of doctors are a class of old black 
women called locally " grannies," who unite with their 
medical practice some of the songs and rites of the Vou- 
doos in Louisiana. But these grannies really know some 
secret decoctions of herbs, very efHcacious in a certain 
class of diseases, and which the white doctors have tried 
hard, but as yet in vain, to detect. These medical secrets 
are transmitted carefully from generation to generation of 
grannies, who are much respected as well as feared by the 
superstitious blacks. 

Even the roustabouts, or deck hands, on the Mississippi 
boats, who handle the freight at the landings and are the 
most degraded types of the negro race on our continent, 
are fond of religious' melody. It is one of the queerest 
anomalies of the negro Hfe in the Bends to see on a river 
boat during a cold night a group of these reprobates 
gathered around the red-hot stove singing religious songs 
with apparently real fervor and sincerity. Outside of his 
singing, not a spark of religion or morals illuminates the 
roustabout's dark life. He carries habitually a revolver, 
razor, and keen knife, the last of which he uses skilfully 
to cut the pockets of sleeping deck passengers. In a 
" razor-fight " the roustabout — and, I believe, most of his 
race — use the weapon in original fashion. They double 
back the handle on the thick part of the blade, then, 
grasping the whole tightly, close the fingers and ball of 
the hand half-way down the blade, so as to leave its whole 
length exposed to a depth of, say, half an inch. With 



382 B V. WA YS OF NA TURE AND LIFE. 

the weapon thus disposed they do not slash, but chop, in- 
flicting dozens of very ghastly but superficial wounds. A 
combatant after a razor-fight looks, clothes and all, a good 
deal as if he had been through a hay-cutter; but in a 
week his wounds are healed, and he is ready for another 
fray. During the busy season the roustabout on the river 
steamers gets from sixty to one hundred dollars a month, 
and four meals a day ; but his work in handling the heavy 
freight and carrying it up the slippery river banks is a 
terrible strain, made doubly severe by the fact that his only 
rest night or day comes in naps between the landings. 
The roustabout wears his clothes from the day they are 
bought until they drop off in rags, without removing them 
once. He is an inveterate gambler, playing with two 
dice an original game called " craps," the main feature of 
which is throwing the number seven, or as near as possi- 
ble to it, though the game h^s many refinements. The 
spectacle of a group of roustabouts around the " crap " 
board, betting large sums, yelling, gesticulating, and in- 
voking aid of all the supernal and infernal powers, as they 
whirl the dice-box high in air, is described as one of the 
most astounding of human sights. Often one or two skil- 
ful gamblers will win three quarters of the wages of a 
newly paid crew before the final trip ends, and what little 
remains, as well as the winnings, are finally spent amid the 
vilest orgies in the purlieus of Vicksburg or New Orleans. 
But physically the roustabout is a wonder. His life of 
heavy lifting develops his upper body until his form seems 



NEGRO SONGS AND HYMNS. 383 

acutely triangular — pointed at the feet. Back of his 
shoulders rise two vast muscles, which give him the sem- 
blance of a hunchback, and his knotted arm-thews, thick 
neck, and protruding chest complete a matchless physique. 
The brutal mates of the river boats, armed with club 
canes, pound these fellows without the slightest effect, and 
the roustabouts are quite as stolidly indifferent to the rain 
of oaths which the mate pours forth with the fluency and 
vigor bred by life-long familiarity with the profane tongue. 
In justice to the plantation negro along the Mississippi, it 
must be said that many of his failings are to be charged 
to the reflected vices of these roustabouts, with whom his 
hard lines of life are necessarily cast. 



THE END. 



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